The 

MFORTS 

BY 

RALPH  BERGF.\r,RKN 


ornia 

al 

7 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

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The  Atlantic  Monthly  Press 
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COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS,  INC. 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


,3503 


CONTENTS 

Thoughts  While  Getting  Settled    .  I 

Praise  of  Open  Fires      .      .      .      .  16 

Furnace  and  I 29 

No  Stairs  —  No  Attic    .      .      .      .41 

Concerning  Kitchens     ....  56 

The  Plumber  Appreciated  ...  68 

The  Home  of  the  Porcelain  Tub    .  81 

At  Home  in  the  Guest  Chamber   .  95 


THOUGHTS  WHILE  GETTING 
SETTLED 

PROPERLY  speaking,  the  new 
house  was  old.  A  hundred  years 
and  more  had  gone  over  its  chimney,  — 
down  which,  as  we  were  to  discover 
later,  a  hundred  flies  and  more  would 
come  when  the  open  fires  had  warmed 
it,  —  and  within  doors  it  would  have 
charmed  any  amateur  of  the  Colonial 
by  the  antiquity  of  its  furnishings. 
Temporarily  it  belonged  to  me,  my 
executors,  administrators,  and  assigns. 
But  there  were  limits  to  our  possession. 
None  of  us  might '  permit  any  hole  to  be 
drilled  or  made  in  the  stone  or  brick 
work  of  said  building';  no  'sign  or  pla 
card  '  might  we  place  upon  it;  we  might 
not  'over-load,  damage,  or  deface'  it; 
nor  might  we  'carry  on  any  unlawful, 
I 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

improper,  noisy,  or  offensive  trade'  in  it. 
We  had  admitted  that  the  glass  was 
whole  and  in  good  order,  and  bound 
ourselves  to  keep  it  good,  unless  broken 
by  fire,  with  glass  of  the  same  kind  and 
quality.  In  case  I  became  bankrupt  I 
had  agreed  that  the  owner,  the  owner's 
executors,  the  owner's  administrators, 
and  the  owner's  assigns  should  treat  me 
with  every  form  of  ignominy  that  the 
law  has  yet  invented  to  make  bank 
ruptcy  more  distressing.  Nor  could  I 
hold  them  responsible  if  our  guests  fell 
down  the  cellar  stairs;  although  there  I 
think  they  would  be  morally  respon- 

% 

sible,  for  a  steeper  flight  of  cellar  stairs 
I  simply  cannot  imagine. 

Of  all  documents  there  is  hardly  an 
other  so  common  as  a  lease,  or  more 
suspicious.  Observe  the  lessor  -  -  a 
benevolent,  dignified,  but  cautious  per 
son!  Observe  the  lessee  -  -  a  worm 


GETTING  SETTLED 

with  criminal  tendencies!  Perhaps  he 
is  a  decent  sort  of  worm,  but  the  lessor 
had  better  look  out  for  him.  Very 
likely  he  will  commit  murders  in  the 
dining-room,  read  the  Contes  Drola- 
tiques  in  the  library,  play  bass-drum 
solos  in  the  parlor,  and  start  a  piggery 
in  the  cellar.  One  suspects  that  possi 
bly  the  great  army  of  hoboes  is  partly 
recruited  from  among  supersensitive 
men  who  read  their  leases  before  sign 
ing  them  and  preferred  vagabondage  to 
insult.  But  some  of  us  control  our  sen 
sitiveness.  I,  for  example,  read  my 
lease;  and  when,  having  agreed  men 
tally  to  post  no  placard  myself,  I  dis 
covered  a  clause  allowing  the  lessor  to 
decorate  my  residence  with  the  informa 
tion  that  it  was 

FOR   SALE 
/  crossed  that  clause  out! 
Observe  the  worm  turning! 

3 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

It  was  the  dining-room  that  had  won 
us,  formerly  the  kitchen  and  still  com 
plete  —  with  the  brick  oven ;  the  crane ; 
the  fat,  three-legged  pots  and  spider;  a 
thing  that,  after  much  debate,  we  think 
must  have  been  a  bread-toaster;  and  a 
kind  of  overgrown  curry-comb  with 
which,  so  we  imagine,  the  original  dwell 
ers  were  wont  to  rake  the  hot  ashes 
from  the  brick  oven.  Also  a  warming- 
pan.  And  although  these  objects 
charm  me,  and  I  delight  to  live  with 
them,  I  cannot  but  wonder  whether  a 
hundred  years  from  now  there  may  not 
be  persons  to  furnish  their  dining-rooms 
with  just  such  a  stove  as  stands  at  pres 
ent  in  my  real  kitchen;  and  perhaps  to 
suspend  beside  it  one  of  those  quaint 
contraptions  with  which  the  jolly  old 
chaps  in  the  early  twentieth  century 
used  to  kill  flies.  I  hear  in  imagination 
the  host  of  that  period  explaining  the 

4 


GETTING  SETTLED 

implement  to  his  wondering  guests,— 
being  expert  in  such  matters,  he  will 
produce  the  technical  term  'swat'  with 
an  air  of  easy  familiarity, —  and  see 
him  hanging  it  reverently  up  again 
beside  the  dear  old  stove  and  right 
over  the  picturesque  old  coal-hod.  Per 
haps,  too,  he  will  point  out  the  beauti 
ful,  sturdy  lines  of  the  coal-hod. 

Now  in  due  time,  or,  to  be  exact, 
some  hours  later,  strong  men  came  to 
this  house  with  a  motor  truck;  and, 
working  with  concentrated  fury,  they 
put  into  it  all  our  own  furniture,  our 
trunks,  our  books,  our  clothes,  and  every 
thing  that  was  ours.  It  had  been  our 
purpose  to  direct  these  men:  to  say, 
'This  goes  here,  kind  sirs,'  and,  'That 
goes  there,  gentlemen ' ;  or,  '  Believe  me, 
this  is  the  place  for  that, '  or,  '  Thank 
you,  sir,  but  that  is  the  place  for  this.' 
When  they  had  come  and  gone,  and  the 

5 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

empty  truck  had  rumbled  away  in  the 
early  autumn  twilight,  everything  was 
to  be  just  where  we  had  planned  in 
advance;  'getting  settled'  would  be  a 
light  but  satisfying  pleasure;  organiza 
tion,  'efficiency  in  business,'  for  we  had 
been  reading  an  article  in  a  magazine, 
would  have  made  changing  our  home  as 
easy  as  changing  our  clothes.  But 
these  men  were  beyond  mortal  control. 
They  came  late  and  their  mood  was  to 
depart  early.  Movers  always  come 
late,  for  two  reasons :  first,  because  they 
like  to  feel  that  you  are  glad  to  see 
them,  and,  second,  because  they  do  not 
like  to  place  each  object  just  where  it 
belongs.  They  prefer  concentrated 
fury.  Children  of  nature,  they  inherit 
their  mother's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum ; 
unable,  as  they  saw  at  a  glance,  to  stuff 
the  whole  house  from  floors  to  ceilings, 
they  devoted  their  attention,  brushing 
6 


GETTING  SETTLED 

us  aside  like  annoying  insects  that  they 
lacked  time  for  killing,  to  stuffing  such 
rooms  as  they  instantly  decided  could 
be  stuffed  the  tightest.  If  there  was 
anything  that  we  might  presumably 
need  at  once,  they  put  it  at  the  bottom 
and  buried  it  under  the  heaviest  avail 
able  furniture.  It  was  wonderful  to  see 
them.  In  the  end  they  actually  took 
money  for  what  they  had  done  and 
went  away  hastily.  Organization  and 
'efficiency  in  business'  had  accom 
plished  something:  the  trunks  were  up 
stairs,  and  two  barrels  had  reached  their 
predestined  place  in  the  cellar. 

There  appears  in  many  business  of 
fices,  although  it  is  not,  so  far  as  I  know, 
the  official  slogan  of  '  efficiency  in  busi 
ness,'  a  card  with  the  motto,  'Do  It 
Now.'  I  looked  into  that  room  which 
was  destined  to  be  the  library:  formerly 
it  had  been  a  bedroom,  and  the  four- 

7 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

poster  bed  and  noble  mahogany  bureau 
were  to  have  vanished  upstairs  before 
my  arrival.  But  now,  peering  past  and 
above  and  under  the  debris  that  the 
avalanche  had  left  there,  I  recognized 
the  noble  mahogany  bureau  in  the  far 
corner,  mourning  presumably  for  its  de 
parted  companion,  the  four-poster.  I 
beheld  it  with  a  misgiving  which  I  tried 
to  put  from  me,  but  which  came  back 
from  moment  to  moment  and  whispered 
in  whichever  ear  was  nearer. 

'Just  suppose,'  whispered  Misgiving, 
'that  the  man  who  was  hired  to  take 
that  bureau  upstairs  found  that  it 
would  n't  go  up !  !  !  ! ' 

And  I  thought  of  that  stairway,  that 
went  up  furtively  from  the  dining-room 
which  had  once  been  the  kitchen,  a 
delightful  stairway  (especially  when  one 
realized  what  a  discouraging  time  a  bur 
glar  would  have  in  finding  it,  and  how 


GETTING  SETTLED 

he  would  probably  find  the  cellar  stairs 
instead  and  die  of  a  broken  neck  at 
the  bottom),  but  narrow,  narrow;  and 
with  a  right  angle  just  where  a  right 
angle  was  least  desirable.  It  had  been 
as  much  as  they  could  do  to  get  up 
the  trunks. 

'You  will  very  likely  have  to  leave 
the  bureau  in  the  library,'  whispered 
Misgiving,  'and  that  will  be  inconven 
ient  —  won't  it?  —  when  you  have 
company.  Company  will  have  to  dress 
in  the  library  or  else  gather  up  its 
clothes  and  run.'-  'Library!'  said 
Misgiving.  'Who  ever  heard  of  a  bu 
reau  in  a  library?  People  will  think 
the  library  table  is  a  folding  bed.  You 
can't  disguise  a  noble  old  bureau  like 
that  by  putting  books  on  it,'  said  Mis 
giving.  'Once  a  bureau  always  a  bu 
reau.  —  What  will  your  wife  say,'  asked 
Misgiving,  'when  she  learns  that  the 

9 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

spare-room  bureau  has  to  stay  down 
stairs  in  the  library?' 

People  who,  having  something  to  do, 
'do  it  now,'  live  in  the  present.  I 
seized  the  nearest  object,  a  chair,  and 
dragged  it  into  the  next  room;  I  seized 
the  next  object,  a  box,  and  carried  it  to 
the  cellar;  I  risked  my  life  on  the  cellar 
stairs;  I  became  concentrated  fury  my 
self.  In  getting  settled,  whether  you 
are  a  pioneer  or  a  householder,  the  first 
thing  is  to  make  a  clearing.  No  matter 
where  things  go,  provided  only  that 
they  go  somewhere  else.  No  matter 
what  happened,  no  matter  if  bureaus  re 
mained  forever  in  libraries,  no  matter  if 
the  awful  puzzle  that  the  strong  men  of 
the  moving  van  had  left  me  remained 
forever  insoluble  —  this  was  my  home 
and  I  had  to  live  in  it  for  the  term  of 
one  year.  I  took  off  my  coat,  hung  it 
up  somewhere  —  and  found  it  again 
10 


GETTING  SETTLED 

two  days  afterward.  I  attacked  boxes, 
chairs,  tables,  boxes,  books,  bric-a-brac, 
more  boxes,  chairs,  tables.  I  ran  here 
and  there,  carrying  things.  I  excelled 
the  bee.  I  made  a  clearing,  which  grew 
larger  and  larger.  I  gained  self-confi 
dence.  Elsewhere  I  knew  that  other 
hands  were  unpacking  trunks;  that  an 
other  mind  was  directing  those  mys 
teries  which  out  of  chaos  would  evolve 
dinner;  now  and  then,  in  my  death-de 
fying  feat  of  going  down  cellar,  I  caught 
a  glimpse  of  the  furnace,  —  fat-bellied 
monster  whom  I  must  later  feed  like  a 
coal-eating  baby. 

It  is  a  question  —  parenthetically— 
whether  it  is  truly  sportsmanlike  to  live 
in  a  quaint  old  colonial  cottage  with  a 
furnace  and  electric  lights.  I  have 
heard  amateurs  of  the  Colonial  declare 
that  they  would  willingly  die  before 
they  would  live  in  an  electrically  lighted 
ii 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

colonial  cottage.  The  anachronism 
horrifies  them:  they  would  have  death 
or  candles.  Probably  they  feel  the 
same  way  about  a  furnace  and  a  bath 
room.  Yet  I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
builders  of  this  colonial  cottage  would 
have  opened  their  hearts  to  all  these  in 
ventions;  and  I  am  not  sure  that  they 
would  have  regarded  as  anything  but 
funny  the  idea  that  their  own  kitchen 
paraphernalia  would  some  day  be  used 
to  decorate  my  dining-room.  I  go  fur 
ther.  Granting  that  electric  lights,  a 
furnace,  and  a  bathroom  are  anachro 
nisms  in  this  quaint  old  colonial  cottage 
-  what  am  I  but  an  anachronism  my 
self?  We  must  stand  together,  the  fur 
nace,  the  electric  metre,  the  porcelain 
bathtub,  and  I,  and  keep  each  other  in 
countenance. 

'  H-m-m-m-m ! '  whispered  Misgiving. 
'How  about  a  bureau  in  the  library? 

12 


GETTING  SETTLED 

That  is  n't  an  anachronism ;  it's  an  ab 
surdity.' 

Making  a  clearing  is  a  long  step  for 
ward  in  getting  settled;  after  that  it  is 
a  matter  of  days,  a  slow  dawn  of  order 
liness.  In  a  quaint  old  colonial  cottage 
are  many  closets,  few  if  any  of  them 
located  according  to  modern  notions  of 
convenience.  The  clothes  closet  that 
ought  to  be  in  the  spare  room  upstairs 
is  downstairs  in  the  library  with  the 
spare-room  bureau ;  the  upstairs  closets 
are  under  the  eaves  of  the  sloping  roof 
-  the  way  to  utilize  them  to  the  best 
advantage  is  to  enter  on  your  hands  and 
knees,  carrying  an  electric  torch  be 
tween  your  teeth.  Inside  the  closet  you 
turn  on  your  back,  illuminate  the  pen 
dant  garments  with  your  torch,  drag 
whatever  you  select  down  from  the 
hook,  grasp  it  firmly  with  your  teeth, 
and  so  out  again  on  your  hands  and 
13 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

knees,  rolling  the  electric  torch  gently 
before  you.  We  see  now  why  in  those 
good  old  days  chests  of  drawers  were 
popular  —  fortunately  we  have  one  of 
our  own  that  somehow  has  got  up  the 
stairway;  and  we  see  also,  as  we  begin 
to  settle  into  it,  what  is  perhaps  the  se 
cret  of  this  humbler  colonial  architec 
ture.  The  Colonial  Jack  who  built  this 
house  wanted  some  rooms  round  a 
chimney  and  a  roof  that  the  snow  would 
slide  off;  and  so  he  built  it;  and  where- 
ever  he  found  a  space  he  made  a  closet 
or  a  cupboard;  and  because  he  had  no 
other  kind,  he  put  in  small-paned  win 
dows  ;  and  all  he  did  was  substantial  and 
honest  —  and  beautiful,  in  its  humble 
\vay,  by  accident. 

But  about  that  bureau? 

Two  strong,  skillful  men,  engaged  for 
the  purpose,  juggled  with  it,  this  way 
and  that,  muttering  words  of  equally 


GETTING  SETTLED 

great  strength  —  and  it  went  upstairs. 
Had  it  been  a  quarter  of  an  inch  wider, 
they  said  afterward,  the  feat  would 
have  been  impossible.  It  was  a  small 
margin,  but  it  will  save  the  company 
from  having  to  knock  timidly  on  the 
library  door  when  it  wishes  to  dress  for 
dinner. 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

I  HAVE  read  and  heard  much  praise 
of  open  fires,  but  I  recall  no  praise 
of  bringing  in  the  wood.    There  is,  to  be 
sure,  the  good  old  song :  — 

Come  bring  with  a  noise, 

My  merrie,  merrie  boys, 

The  Christmas  log  to  the  firing; 

While  my  good  dame,  she 

Bids  ye  all  make  free, 

And  drink  to  your  heart's  desiring. 

But  this  refers  to  a  particular  log,  the 
Yule  log  (or  clog,  as  they  used  to  call  it) 
which  was  brought  in  only  once  a  year, 
and,  even  so,  the  singer  evidently  is  not 
bringing  it  in  himself.  He  is  looking  on. 
The  merrie,  merrie  boys,  he  thinks, 
need  encouragement.  After  they  have 
got  the  log  in,  and  the  good  dame  has 
produced  the  rewarding  jug,  bowl,  or 
bottle,  everybody  will  feel  better.  Dry 
16 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

without  and  wet  within;  how  oft,  in 
deed,  has  praise  of  open  fire  kept  com 
pany  with  praise  of  open  bottle!  For 
ests  uncounted  have  been  cut  down,  - 
the  hillside  beech,  from  where  the  owl 
ets  meet  and  screech ;  the  crackling  pine, 
the  cedar  sweet,  the  knotted  oak,  with 
fragrant  peat,  —  and  burned  up,  stick 
by  stick;  so  that,  as  the  poet  explains, 
the  bright  flames,  dancing,  winking, 
shall  light  us  at  our  drinking. 

Others  than  inebriates  have  sung  the 
praise  of  open  fires;  but  the  most  high 
ly  respectable,  emulating  the  bright 
flames,  have  usually  winked  at  drink 
ing.  But  never  one  of  them,  so  far  as 
I  remember,  has  praised  the  honest, 
wholesome,  temperate  exercise  of  bring 
ing  in  the  wood. 

And    there   is   the   Song   That   Has 
Never  Been  Sung  —  nor  ever  will  be, 
so  the  tune  is  immaterial :  — 
17 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

How  jolly  it  is,  of  a  cold  winter  morning, 
To  pop  out  of  bed  just  a  bit  before  dawning, 
And,  thinking  the  while  of  your  jolly  cold  bath, 
To  kindle  a  flame  on  your  jolly  cold  hearth ! 

Ah  me,  it  is  merry! 

Sing  derry-down-derry ! 
Where  now  is  the  lark?    I  am  up  before  him. 
I  chuckle  with  glee  at  this  quaint  little  whim. 
I  make  up  the  fire  —  pray  Heaven  it  catches ! 
But  what  in  the  world  have  they  done  with  the 
matches? 

Ah  me,  it  is  merry! 

Sing  derry-down-derry! 

And  so  forth,  and  so  forth. 

I  invented  that  song  myself,  in  Jan 
uary,  1918,  when  circumstances  led  me 

-  so  to  speak,  by  the  nape  of  the  neck 

-  to  heat  my  home  with  wood  because 
nowhere  could  I  buy  coal.  But  I  felt  no 
inpulse  to  sing  it  —  simply  a  deeper, 
kindlier  sympathy  for  forefather  in  the 
good  old  days  before  stoves  and  fur 
naces.  I  do  not  blame  him  for  not  tak 
ing  a  cold  bath.  I  wish  in  vain  that  he 
had  had  the  thing  that  I  call  a  match. 

18 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

An  archaeological  authority  tells  me 
how  forefather  managed  without  it:— 

'Holding  between  the  thumb  and 
forefinger  of  the  right  hand  a  piece  of 
imported  gun-flint  (long  quarried  at 
Brandon  in  Suffolk,  England),  strike  it 
diagonally  against  a  circlet  of  properly 
tempered  steel  held  in  the  left  hand,  so 
that  the  spark  flies  downward  on  a  dry, 
scorched  linen  rag  lying  in  a  tin  cup 
(the  tinder-box).  When  the  spark  in 
stantly  catches  the  rag,  blow  or  touch 
it  into  flame  against  the  sulphur-tipped 
end  of  a  match,  which  will  not  other 
wise  ignite.  Then  with  the  burning 
match,  light  a  candle  socketed  in  the 
lid  of  the  tinder-box,  and  smother  the 
smouldering  rag  with  an  inner  tin  lid 
dropped  upon  it.  Thus  you  were  mas 
ter  of  the  house  of  a  winter's  morning 
when  the  fires  were  out.' 

But  I  would  n't  believe  that  archaeo- 
19 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

logical  authority  if  he  had  added,  'sing 
ing  at  your  task.'  Singeing  at  it  seems 
more  plausible. 

To  many  of  us  plain  bread-and- 
butter  persons,  praise  of  open  fires  some 
times  seems  a  little  too  warm  and  com 
fortable  —  too  smugly  contemplative. 
We  like  open  fires.  We  would  have 
them  in  every  room  in  the  house  except 
the  kitchen  and  bathroom  —  and  per 
haps  in  the  bathroom,  where  we  could 
hang  our  towels  from  the  mantelpiece 
(as  gallant  practical  gentlemen,  now 
some  centuries  dead,  named  it  by  hang 
ing  up  their  wet  mantles),  and  let  them 
warm  while  we  were  taking  our  baths. 
We  go  as  far  as  any  in  regarding  the 
open  fire  as  a  welcoming  host  in  the  hall, 
an  undisturbing  companion  in  the  li 
brary,  an  encourager  of  digestion  in  the 
dining-room,  an  enlivener  in  the  living- 
room,  and  a  good-night  thought  of 
20 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

hospitality  in  the  guest-chamber.  But 
we  cannot  follow  the  essayist  who  speaks 
scornfully  of  hot-water  pipes.  'From 
the  security  of  ambush,'  says  he,  'they 
merely  heat,  and  heat  whose  source  is 
invisible  is  not  to  be  coveted  at  all.' 

Oh,  merely  heat!  The  blithe  gentle 
man  betrays  himself  out  of  his  own  ink 
well.  He  may  have  forgotten  it,  - 
very  likely  somebody  else  takes  care  of 
it,  —  but  there  is  a  furnace  in  his  cellar. 
Does  he,  we  ask  him  seriously,  covet 
the  reciprocal  affection  of  some  beloved 
woman  —  start  as  angrily  as  he  may  at 
our  suggestion  of  any  comparison  be 
tween  her  and  a  hot-water  pipe  —  only 
when  he  can  see  her?  Or,  supposing  him 
a  confirmed  woman-hater,  does  he  re 
pudiate  underwear? 

He  brushes  aside  the  questions. 
'With  a  fire  in  one's  bedroom,'  says  he, 
'sleep  comes  witchingly.' 

21 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

'Unless,'  say  we,  'a  spark  or  coal 
jumps  out  on  the  rug  and  starts  to  set 
the  bedroom  afire.  Better,'  say  we, 
pursuing  the  subject  in  our  heavy  way, 
'a  Philistine  in  bed  than  a.  fellow  of  fine 
taste  stamping  out  a  live  coal  with  his 
bare  feet.' 

And  so  we  thank  the  thoughtful  host 
who  safely  and  sanely  screens  the  open 
fire  in  his  guest-chamber;  but  fie,  fie 
upon  him  if  he  has  decoratively  ar 
ranged  on  our  temporary  hearth  Wood 
without  Kindlings! 

If  you  give  it  half  a  chance,  my 
friend,  this  'joy  perpetual,'  as  you  call 
it,  will  eat  you  up. 

And  yet  we  agree  with  anybody  that 
nothing  else  in  the  house  has  appealed 
so  long  and  so  universally  to  the  im 
agination  of  man.  It  began  before 
houses.  Remote  and  little  in  the  far 
perspective  of  time,  we  see  a  distant 
22 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

and  awful-looking  relative,  whom  we 
blush  to  acknowledge,  kindling  his  fire; 
and  that  fire,  open  as  all  outdoors,  was 
the  seed  and  beginning  of  domestic 
living.  With  it,  the  Objectionable  An 
cestor  learned  to  cook,  and  in  this  way 
differentiated  himself  from  the  beasts. 
Kindling  it,  he  learned  to  swear,  and 
differentiated  himself  further.  Think 
ing  about  it,  his  dull  but  promising 
mind  conceived  the  advantage  of  hav 
ing  somebody  else  to  kindle  it;  so  he 
caught  an  awful-looking  woman,  and 
instituted  the  family  circle.  Soon,  I 
fancy,  he  acquired  the  habit  of  sitting 
beside  his  fire  when  he  should  have  been 
doing  something  more  active;  but  a 
million  years  must  pass  before  he  was 
presentable,  and  another  million  before 
he  had  coat-tails,  and  could  stand  in 
front  of  it,  spreading  them  like  a  pea 
cock  in  the  pride  of  his  achievement  - 

23 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

a  Captain  Bonavita  turning  his  back  on 
the  lion.  I  would  have  you  note,  for 
what  it  may  be  worth,  that  praise  of 
open  fires  has  always  been  masculine 
rather  than  feminine. 

Nowadays,  I  judge,  many  of  his  de 
scendants  find  the  open  fire  much  like 
a  little  movie  theatre  in  the  home. 
Under  the  proscenium  arch  of  the  fire 
place  the  flames  supply  actors  and 
scenery,  and  the  show  goes  on  indefi 
nitely.  It  is  better  than  a  movie,  for 
it  has  color,  and  lacks  the  agonizing 
facial  contortions  and  interpolated  text : 
'Even  a  Princess  is  just  a  girl  —  at 
Coney  Island' ;  '  It  is  like  the  nobility 
of  your  true  heart,  old  friend,  but  I 
cannot  accept  the  heroic  sacrifice.' 

Sometimes  it  is  useful.  An  author 
sits  by  the  fire,  and  smokes;  and  soon 
the  puppets  of  his  next  romance  oblig 
ingly  appear  and  act  a  chapter  for  him. 
24 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

To-morrow  he  will  dictate  that  chapter 
to  his  pretty  stenographer.  Sometimes 
it  is  consoling.  A  lover  sits  by  the  fire 
and  smokes;  presently  he  sees  his  love 
in  the  flames,  and  sighs  —  as  Shake 
speare  would  say  —  like  a  furnace. 
Sometimes  it  does  n't  work.  /  sit  by 
the  fire,  and  smoke;  and  I  see  nothing 
but  fire  and  smoke. 

It  is  a  pleasant  place  to  sit  —  and  yet 
how  rapidly  and  unanimously,  when 
coal  came  into  use,  and  stoves  came  on 
the  market,  did  people  stop  sitting,  and 
brick  up  their  fireplaces!  They  had  no 
time  for  essays,  but  praise  of  stoves 
ascended  wherever  the  wonderful  things 
were  available.  A  new  world  was  born : 
stoves!  kitchen  ranges!  furnaces!  hot- 
water  pipes!  heat  all  over  the  house! 
-  invisible,  to  be  sure,  but  nobody 
seemed  to  worry  about  that.  And  out 
went  the  open  fire  —  to  be  lit  again 

25 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

later,  but  never  again  as  a  cooker  of 
food  and  a  warmer  of  the  whole  house. 
It  came  back  to  be  sat  by. 

There  are  times,  indeed,  —  speaking 
as  the  spokesman  of  bread-and-butter, 
-  when  the  open  fire  seems  to  stimu 
late  amazingly  our  powers  of  conversa 
tion.  We  sparkle  (for  us) ;  we  become 
(or  at  least  we  feel)  engagingly  ani 
mated;  but  is  it  really  the  open  fire?  I 
have  met  those  with  whom  it  is  no  more 
stimulating  to  sit  cosily  beside  an  open 
fire  than  cosily  beside  an  open  sea  or  an 
open  trolley-car  or  an  open  window  or  an 
open  oyster.  I  have  known  others  in 
whose  company  a  kitchen  range  seemed 
just  as  stimulating. 

Fires  go  out,  but  each  new  flame  is  a 
reincarnation.  Our  open  fires  are  but 
miniatures  of  the  old-time  roarers  that 
set  the  hall  or  tavern  harmlessly  ablaze, 
and  lit  its  windows  for  the  ruddy  en- 
26 


PRAISE  OF  OPEN  FIRES 

couragement  of  winter-blown  travelers. 
Reverting  to  the  menagerie  for  a  figure, 
the  open  fires  of  the  past  were  lions, 
those  of  to-day  are  cubs.  Like  cubs 
they  amuse  us;  and  so  we  forget  what 
grim  and  tragic  humors  of  life  the  open 
fire  must  necessarily  have  witnessed. 
Was  it  not  before  an  open  fire  that 
Cain  killed  Abel?  In  the  glow  of  those 
bright  flames,  dancing,  winking,  has 
been  planned  every  villainy  of  which 
mankind  is  capable:  winked  they  have 
at  every  sin  that  could  be  sinned  by  fire 
light.  Elemental  and  without  morals, 
the  open  fire  has  lived  in  hovels  as  well 
as  in  palaces;  it  has  lighted  the  student, 
heels  in  air  and  lying  on  his  belly  to 
study  his  book;  the  Puritan  on  his  knees 
at  prayer;  the  reveler,  flat  on  his  back 
and  snoring  in  maudlin  sleep  under  the 
table.  And  now,  a  luxury  of  the  well- 
to-do,  it  is  departing,  dancing  and  wink- 
27 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

ing  as  usual,  out  of  the  universal  life  to 
which  it  has  been  as  necessary  as  cooked 
food  and  warmth  in  winter. 

But  perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  not  yet 
too  late  for  praise  of  bringing  in  the 
wood.  Let  us  at  least  provide  the  good 
old  song,  and  trust  to  luck  that  four  or 
five  hundred  years  from  now  some  imag 
inative  gentleman,  digesting  his  dinner 
before  a  surviving  open  fire,  will  hear 
afar  off  the  faint  but  jolly  chorus:— 

Come,  lads,  all  together, 

And  get  the  wood  in. 

This  brisk  zero  weather 

Is  pleasant  as  sin. 

Put  on  your  warm  hosen, 

And  shuffle  a  bit; 

Your  toes  may  be  frozen 

Before  you  know  it. 

To  sit  mug-a-mugging 

The  fire  who  could, 

That  might  be  out  lugging 

In  armfuls  of  wood? 

In  —  armfuls  —  of  —  wood ! 


FURNACE  AND  I 

SUMMER  is  the  favorite  time  to 
advertise  furnaces,  for,  although 
a  pacifist  might  argue  that  being  pre 
pared  for  cold  weather  encourages  frost, 
the  practical  persons  who  make  and  sell 
heating  plants  are  firm  believers  in  pre 
paredness.  They  produce  diagrams 
and  pictures,  showing  how  their  furnace 
bisects  the  coal  bill,  and  how  easily  a 
pretty  child  can  run  it  from  the  front 
hall. 

But  my  furnace  is  different.  I  defy 
the  prettiest  child  imaginable  to  run  it. 
Indeed,  in  a  strict  sense,  I  defy  anybody 
to  run  it ;  for  this  furnace  has  a  mind  of 
its  own  and  an  odd  ambition  to  behave 
like  a  thermometer.  On  a  warm  day  it 
goes  up,  on  a  cold  day  it  goes  down ;  in 
zero  weather  it  takes  all  the  time  of  a 
29 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

determined  man  to  head  it  off  from  be 
coming  a  large,  inconvenient  refrigera 
tor.  As  for  bisecting  coal  bills,  the  crea 
ture  likes  coal.  I  have  even  thought 
that  it  uttered  strange,  self-congratula 
tory,  happy  noises  whenever  there  oc- 
cured  a  rise  in  the  price  of  its  favorite 
edible. 

Before  meeting  this  furnace  I  had 
lived  in  apartments,  and  my  mental  con 
ception  of  a  ton  of  coal  had  been  as  of 
something  enormous,  sufficient  to  heat 
the  average  house  a  month.  A  furnace 
was  to  me  a  remote  mystery  operated 
by  a  high  priest  called  'janitor,'  whom 
I  vaguely  connected  with  the  lines  of 
Smollett,  - 

Th'  Hesperian  dragon  not  more  fierce  and  fell ; 
Nor  the  gaunt,  growling  janitor  of  Hell. 

I  took  my  heat  as  a  matter  of  course.    If 

I  wanted  more  of  it,  I  spoke  warmly  to 

the  janitor  through  a  speaking  tube, 

30 


FURNACE  AND  I 

and  —  after  a  while  —  there  was  more 
heat.  If  I  wanted  less,  I  spoke  to  him 
coldly,  in  the  same  distant,  godlike  way, 
and  —  after  a  while  —  there  was  less 
heat.  In  neither  case,  I  discovered,  did 
an  ordinary  tone  of  voice  get  any  result 
whatever;  and,  although  a  fat  man 
himself,  he  sometimes  growled  back 
through  the  tube  very  much  like  the 
gaunt  specimen  mentioned  by  Smollett. 
But  I  gave  little  thought  to  him.  I  had 
what  is  called  an  'intelligent  idea'  that 
to  produce  more  heat  he  opened  a 
'draft,'  and  to  reduce  heat  he  closed  it, 
the  effect  of  a  draft  on  a  furnace  being 
just  the  opposite  to  its  effect  on  a  jan 
itor.  At  night  he  'shook  the  furnace 
down,'  in  the  morning  he  'shook  the 
furnace  up.'  One  gathers  such  knowl 
edge  casually,  without  conscious  effort 
or  realization.  I  had  in  fact  no  more 
curiosity  about  the  furnace  than  about 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

the  sun,  for  I  seemed  as  unlikely  to  run 
one  heater  as  the  other. 

Then,  like  many  another  man  who 
has  lived  in  apartments,  I  turned  sub 
urbanite.  I  had  a  furnace,  and  I  had  to 
run  it  myself.  How  well  I  remember 
that  autumn  day  when  I  started  my 
first  furnace  fire! 

There  sat  the  monster  on  the  floor 
of  the  cellar,  impassive  as  Buddha,  and 
apparently  holding  up  the  house  with 
as  many  arms  as  an  octopus  —  hollow 
arms  through  which  presently  would 
flow  the  genial  heat.  I  peeked  cau 
tiously  through  a  little  door  into  his 
stomach,  and  marveled  at  its  hollow 
immensity.  I  reached  in  till  my  arm 
ached  —  and  my  hand  dangled  in  empty 
space.  But  my  intelligence  told  me 
that  there  must  be  a  bottom.  Crum 
pling  a  newspaper  into  a  great  wad,  I 
dropped  itjdown,  down  into  the  mon- 
32 


FURNACE  AND  I 

ster's  gullet,  where  it  vanished  forever. 
I  crumpled  and  dropped  another;  I  con 
tinued,  until  at  last  —  oh,  triumph  of 
mind  and  industry  over  incalculable 
depth! — I  saw  newspaper,  and  had 
something  tangible  on  which  to  erect  a 
pyre  of  kindlings.  Where  I  could  reach 
I  laid  them  crosswise,  and  where  I  could 
n't  I  tossed  them  in  at  varying  angles, 
gaining  skill  with  practice. 

'  It  is  like  a  great  wooden  nest ! '  cried 
I  in  astonishment.  'Now  I  know  why 
the  coal  I  have  bought  for  my  furnace 
is  called  "egg."' 

I  lit  the  fire  and  made  a  grand 
smoke. 

It  rose  through  the  kindlings;  it  piled 
out  through  the  little  door;  it  hung  like 
great  cobwebs  to  the  roof  of  the  cellar. 
With  great  presence  of  mind  I  hastily 
closed  the  little  door  and  ran  lightly  up 
the  cellar-stairs.  The  smoke  had  pre- 
33 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

ceded  me;  it  got  there  first  through  the 
registers ;  and  more  was  coming. 

1  met  a  woman. 

' Is  the  house  afire?'  she  asked  ex 
citedly. 

I  calmed  her.  '  It  is  not,'  I  replied 
quietly,  in  a  matter-of-course  way. 
'When  you  start  a  fire  for  the  winter  it 
always  smokes  a  little.' 

We  opened  the  windows.  We  went 
outside  and  looked  at  the  house.  It 
leaked  smoke  through  every  crevice 
except,  curiously  enough,  the  chimney. 
Ah-h-h-h-h!  I  saw  what  had  happened. 
I  groped  my  way  to  the  cellar  and 
opened  the  back  damper.  Now  the 
smoke  went  gladly  up  the  chimney,  and 
the  view  through  the  little  door  was  at 
once  beautiful  and  awful:  it  was  like 
looking  into  the  heart  of  an  angry  vol 
cano.  Evidently  it  was  time  to  lay  the 
eggs  on  the  nest. 

34 


FURNACE  AND  I 

I  shoveled  the  abyss  full  of  coal,  and 
the  volcano  became  extinct.  Presently, 
instead  of  a  furnace  full  of  fire,  I  had  a 
furnace  full  of  egg  coal.  I  began  taking 
it  out,  egg  by  egg,  at  first  with  my  fin 
gers  and  then  with  the  tongs  from  the 
dining-room  fireplace.  And  when  the 
woman  idly  questioned  me  as  to  what  I 
was  going  to  do  down  cellar  with  the 
tongs,  I  bit  my  lips. 

To  the  man  who  runs  it  (an  absurd 
term  as  applied  to  a  thing  that  has  no 
legs  and  weighs  several  tons)  the  fur 
nace  is  his  first  thought  in  the  morn 
ing  and  his  last  thought  at  night. 
His  calendar  has  but  two  seasons  - 
winter,  when  the  furnace  is  going, 
and  summer,  when  the  furnace  is  out. 
But  in  summer  his  thoughts  are  nat 
urally  more  philosophical.  He  sees 
how  profoundly  this  recent  invention 
(which  he  is  not  at  the  time  running) 

35 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

has  changed  man's  attitude  toward 
nature. 

I  am,  of  course,  not  referring  to  those 
furnaces  which  are  endowed  with  more 
than  the  average  human  intelligence; 
those  superfurnaces  which  are  met  with 
in  the  advertisements,  which  shake 
themselves  down,  shovel  their  own  coal, 
carry  and  sift  their  own  ashes,  regulate 
their  own  draughts,  and,  if  they  do  not 
actually  order  and  pay  for  their  own 
coal,  at  least  consume  it  as  carefully  as 
if  they  did. 

With  a  furnace  like  mine  a  man  ex 
periences  all  the  emotions  of  which  he 
is  capable.  He  loves,  he  hates,  he  ad 
mires,  he  despises,  he  grieves,  he  exults. 
There  have  been  times  when  I  have  felt 
like  patting  my  furnace;  and  again, 
times  when  I  have  slammed  his  little 
door  and  spoken  words  to  him  far,  far 
hotter  than  the  fire  that  smouldered  and 
36 


FURNACE  AND  I 

refused  to  burn  in  his  bowels.  I  judge 
from  what  I  have  read  that  taming  a 
wild  animal  must  be  a  good  deal  like 
taming  a  furnace,  with  one  important 
exception :  the  wild-animal-tamer  never 
loses  his  temper  or  the  beast  would  kill 
him;  but  a  furnace,  fortunately  for 
suburban  mortality,  cannot  kill  its 
tamer. 

\Yhen  his  furnace  happens  to  be  good- 
natured,  however,  a  man  will  often  find 
the  bedtime  hour  with  it  pleasant  and 
even  enjoyable.  He  descends,  hum 
ming  or  whistling,  to  the  cellar;  and 
the  subsequent  shaking  and  shoveling 
is,  after  all,  no  more  than  a  healthy  ex 
ercise  which  he  would  not  otherwise 
take  and  which  will  make  him  sleep 
better.  He  is  friendly  with  this  rotund, 
coal-eating  giant;  he  regards  it  almost 
like  a  big  baby  which  he  is  putting  to  bed 
-  or,  at  least,  he  might  so  regard  it  if 
37 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

putting  a  baby  to  bed  was  one  of  his  re 
cognized  pleasures. 

But,  oh,  what  a  difference  in  the 
morning!  He  awakes  in  the  dark, 
startled  perhaps  from  some  pleasant 
dream  by  the  wild  alarm-m-m-m  of  a 
clock  under  his  pillow;  and  outside  the 
snug  island  of  warmth  on  which  he  lies, 
the  Universe  stretches  away  in  every 
direction,  above,  below,  and  on  every 
side  of  him,  cold,  dreary,  and  unfit  for 
human  habitation,  to  and  beyond  the 
remotest  star.  In  that  cold  Universe 
how  small  he  is !  —  how  warm  and  how 
weak!  Instantly  he  thinks  of  the  fur 
nace,  and  the  remotest  star  seems  near 
by  comparison.  The  thought  of  getting 
up  and  going  down  cellar  seems  as  un 
real  as  the  thought  of  getting  up  and 
going  to  meet  the  sun  at  that  pale  streak 
which,  through  his  easterly  window, 
heralds  the  reluctant  coming  of  another 
38 


FURNACE  AND  I 

day.  Yet  he  knows  that  he  must,  and 
that  eventually  he  will,  get  up.  In  vain 
he  tells  himself  how  splendid,  how  in 
vigorating  will  be  the  plunge  from  his 
warm  bed  right  into  the  fresh,  brisk, 
hygienic  morning  air. 

The  fresh,  brisk,  hygienic  morning 
air  does  not  appeal  to  him.  Unwil 
lingly  he  recalls  a  line  in  the  superfur- 
nace  advertisement,  -  '  Get  up  warm 
and  cosy,'  -  -  and  helplessly  wishes  that 
he  had  such  a  furnace.  'Like  Andrew 
Carnegie!'  he  adds  bitterly.  At  that 
moment  he  would  anarchistically  as 
sassinate  Andrew,  provided  he  could  do 
it  without  getting  up.  Nevertheless  - 
he  gets  up !  He  puts  on  -  -  '  Curse  it, 
where  is  that  sleeve?'  -  the  bath-robe 
and  slippers  that  have  been  all  night 
cooling  for  him,  and  starts  on  his  lonely 
journey  through  the  tomblike  silence. 
Now,  if  ever,  is  the  time  to  hum,  but 

39 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

there  is  not  a  hum  in  him :  down,  down, 
down  he  goes  to  the  cellar  and  peeks 
with  dull  hope  through  the  familiar 
little  door.  'Good  morning,  Fire.'  He 
shakes,  he  shovels,  he  opens  drafts  and 
manipulates  dampers.  And  the  Fur 
nace,  impassive,  like  a  Buddha  holding 
up  the  house  with  as  many  arms  as  an 
octopus,  seems  to  be  watching  him  with 
a  grave  yet  idle  interest.  Which  is  all 
the  more  horrible  because  it  has  no  face. 


NO  STAIRS!  — NO  ATTIC 

ATTICS  are  done  for !  Listen  to  the 
words  of  the  man  who  has  built, 
and  written  about,  what  he  calls  a  Serv- 
antless  Cottage :  - 

'  Climbing  stairs  is  ofttimes  too  stren 
uous  for  the  happy  housewife,  so  there 
must  be  no  stairs.' 

Shades  of  our  grandmothers!  If  we 
can  believe  this  enthusiastic  designer 
and  builder,  only  a  few  more  decades 
at  most  will  miserable  women,  unhappy 
housewives,  and,  by  inference,  undesir 
able  mothers,  continue  to  drag  up  and 
down  stairs  their  pitiful  existences  in 
houses  of  more  than  one  story. 

'No  stairs!  No  stairs!'  the  young  wife  cried, 

And  clapped  her  hands  to  see 
A  house  as  like  a  little  flat 

As  any  house  could  be! 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

And  observe  also,  not  only  the  van 
ishing  of  stairs  and  attics,  but  the  disap 
pearance  of  the  servant-problem.  '  For 
in  this  Servantless  Cottage/  says  the 
satisfied  man,  'milady  need  fear  no 
drudgery.  A  very  few  hours  will  suffice 
for  housekeeping  and  cookery.  Work 
becomes  a  pleasure  and  a  maid  unde 
sirable.' 

Well,  well!  There  have  been  a  good 
many  proposed  solutions  of  the  domes 
tic  service  question  —  but  to  solve  it  by 
giving  it  up  seems  no  very  crowning  tri 
umph  of  domestic  mathematics.  The 
experience  of  innumerable  young  mar 
ried  couples  with  kitchenettes  goes  to 
show  that  life  can  be  conducted  under 
that  solution,  especially  when  the  cou 
ples  are  young  and  but  recently  married. 
Then,  indeed,  they  need  neither  an  at 
tic  in  the  top  of  the  house  nor  a  general 
-  that  brave  girl  capable  of  turning  a 
42 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

quick  efficient  hand  to  everything  from 
dusting  to  doughnuts  —  all  over  it. 
But  why  not,  for  that  matter,  admit  that 
'  climbing  is  of ttimes  too  strenuous  for  a 
happy  general.'  She,  too  is  human  - 
has  legs  —  gets  tired  - 

This  designer  of  servantless  cottages 
was,  I  imagine,  an  atticless  child:  he 
climbed  no  stairs  to  that  room  of  pleas 
ing  mystery,  rich  in  dusty  and  discarded 
things  that  had  once  been  living  and 
important  in  the  life  of  his  family,  where 
the  sunbeams  streamed  like  a  ladder 
down  through  the  skylight,  or,  on  other 
days,  the  drops  of  water  pelted  its  nar 
row  panes  and  added  their  orchestral 
voices  to  the  symphony  of  rain  on  the 
roof.  His  grandparents  had  died  when 
he  was  a  baby;  their  house  had  been 
sold  or  torn  down,  their  attic  accumula 
tions  scattered,  and  his  family  lived  in 
a  new  house  where  the  attic  had  as  yet 
43 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

taken  on  no  more  attraction  to  juvenile 
adventure  than  the  spare  bedroom. 
He  was,  probably,  a  thoughtful  child 
who  brooded  over  his  mother's  troubles 
in  securing  and  keeping  satisfactory 
'help.'  The  house  in  which  he  passed 
those  young  years  was  very  likely  built 
in  the  time  of  high  ceilings  and  long 
flights  of  stairs, —  how  often,  through 
the  banisters,  had  the  little  fellow  seen 
his  mother's  tired  ankles  lagging  on  the 
ascent  as  he  sat  in  the  library  poring 
over  some  volume  of  architecture  !- 
and  he  took  a  childish  oath  that  when 
he  married  —  how  little  he  knew  about 
that !  —  his  wife  should  not  have  to 
climb  stairs,  his  wife  should  not  have  to 
worry  about  servants.  Yet  for  a  long 
time  it  seemed  as  if  he  would  never 
marry,  for  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to  put 
in  an  escalator.  And  then  one  day,  in 
his  maturity,  spurred  perhaps  by  a  more 

44 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

understanding  and  ardent  desire,  and 
driven  harder  by  the  unselfish  thought 
that,  even  while  he  dreamed,  SHE  might 
marry  somebody  else  and  be  doomed 
for  life  to  climbing  stairs  and  engaging 
new  servants,  he  saw  the  solution.  He 
would  build  a  house  of  only  one  story 
and  let  HER  do  the  work. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  bungalow 
is  a  pretty  good  thing.  If  this  student 
of  architecture  and  domestic  economics 
had  contented  himself  with  a  plain  and 
simple  description  of  his  servantless 
cottage,  I  dare  say  I  should  have  read 
it  in  the  most  friendly  spirit  imaginable: 
and  certainly  with  no  desire  to  criticize 
his  conclusions.  It  was  that  silly  re 
mark  about  'milady'  that  aroused  op 
position.  We  live  in  a  republic  and  we 
are  most  of  us  reasonably  self-respecting 
men  and  women,  not  a  milady  among 
us,  unless  she  happens  to  be  making  a 

45 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

visit  —  in  which  case,  one  place  she  is 
not  visiting  is  a  servantless  cottage. 
And  so,  in  a  word,  the  servantless  cot 
tage  ceases  to  be  an  honest,  more  or  less 
successful  effort  to  provide  a  home  in 
which  the  housewife  can  most  conven' 
iently  do  her  own  work,  and  appears  a 
neat  little  example  of  snobbish  absurd 
ity.  Work  becomes  a  pleasure  to  the 
happy  housewife  for  whom  climbing  a 
flight  of  stairs  is  ofttimes  all  too  strenu 
ous  —  so  keen  and  persistent  a  pleasure 
that  domestic  service  is  'undesirable!' 
Is  anybody  really  expected  to  believe 
it?  Or  is  domestic  service  itself  a  phase 
of  domesticity  that  can  be  so  cheerfully 
eliminated?  Has  the  servant  —  and, 
bless  you!  the  word  has  often  enough 
been  a  term  of  honor  —  no  really  fine 
and  enduring  place  in  the  scheme  of 
gracious  and  cultivated  domestic  man 
agement? 

46 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

For  many  generations,  stairs  and  ser 
vice  have  been  inseparable  from  the 
amenities  of  domestic  living.  One  has 
only  to  imagine  these  two  essentials 
suddenly  eliminated  from  literature,  to 
experience  a  pained  sensation  at  the 
care-free  way  in  which  the  man  of  the 
servantless  cottage  gets  rid  of  them. 
And  one  has  only  to  look  about  the 
world  as  it  stands  at  present,  servant- 
problem  and  all,  to  realize  that  it  is  the 
value  of  good  domestic  service  which 
actually  creates  and  keeps  alive  the 
problem  itself.  For  even  if  the  happy 
housewife  enjoys  every  single  item  of 
housekeeping  and  cookery,  there  are 
times  when  her  personal  attention  to 
them  is  obviously  undesirable. 

Imagine  our  servantless  cottage  as 
an  example.  Milady  sings  at  her  work. 
The  portable  vacuum  cleaner  —  milord 
keeps  up  with  all  the  latest  improve- 

47 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

merits  —  gratefully  eats  up  its  daily 
dust.  The  fireless  cooker  prepares  the 
meals  'with  a  perfection  and  delicious- 
ness  unrealized  in  the  old  days.'  A  has 
mother  and  the  way  she  used  to  cook! 
But  in  serving  these  meals  of  a  hitherto 
unrealized  perfection  and  deliciousness, 
milord  and  milady  must  needs  chase 
each  other  between  kitchen  and  dining- 
room.  The  guest  at  dinner,  if  he  is 
luckily  accustomed  to  picnics,  carries 
his  own  plate  and  washes  it  afterward. 
I  have  myself  entertained  many  a  guest 
in  this  fashion,  and  he  has  carried  his 
own  plate,  and,  being  that  kind  of  a 
guest  or  I  would  n't  have  invited  him, 
he  has  cheerfully  helped  wash  the 
dishes,  wearing  a  borrowed  apron.  But 
it  would  be  absurd  to  claim  that  this 
performance,  indefinitely  repeated,  is 
an  improvement  upon  an  orderly,  effi 
ciently  served  dinner-party.  Conversa- 
48 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

tion  at  dinner  is  more  desirable  than  a 
foot-race  between  the  courses ;  nor  do  I 
believe  that  life  under  such  conditions 
can  possibly  'become  so  alluring  that 
one  day  the  great  majority  of  us  will 
choose  it  first  of  all.' 

Concerning  stairs:  I  perhaps  have 
more  feeling  for  them  than  most;  but  I 
am  quite  sure  that  I  speak  at  least  for  a 
large  minority.  It  is  the  flatness  of  the 
flat,  its  very  condensed  and  restricted 
cosiness,  its  very  lack  of  upstairs  and 
downstairs,  which  prevents  it  from  ever 
attaining  completely  the  atmosphere  of 
a  home.  The  feet  which  cross  the  floor 
above  your  head  are  those  of  another 
family;  the  sounds  which  reach  you 
from  below  are  the  noises  of  strangers; 
the  life  horizontal  of  the  flat  serves  its 
convenient  use  but  only  emphasizes  the 
independence  and  self-respect  of  the 
life  vertical,  master  of  the  floor  above, 

49 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

master  likewise  of  the  basement.  I, 
who  have  lived  happily  in  a  flat,  never 
theless  feel  more  human,  less  like  some 
ingeniously  constructed  doll,  when  I 
can  take  my  candle  in  hand  and  go  up 
stairs  to  sleep.  Because  I  have  lived 
happily  in  a  flat,  I  want  no  bungalow. 
There  is  something  fine  in  going  to 
sleep  even  one  flight  nearer  the  stars  — 
and  away  from  the  dining-room. 

And  no  stairs  —  no  attic.  My  con 
viction  increases  that  this  man  was  an 
atticless  child,  without  grandparents 
himself,  and  without  thought  of  his  own 
possible  grandchildren.  Or  is  the  stair 
less,  servantless,  atticless  cottage  - 
'  truly  the  little  house  is  the  house  of  the 
f uture '-- meant  also  to  be  childless? 
An  examination  of  the  plan  shows  a  so- 
called  bedroom  marked  'guest  or  chil 
dren,'  which  indicates  that  the  happy 
housewife  must  exercise  her  own  judg- 

50 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

ment.  There  are  accommodations  for 
one  guest  or  two  children,  but  it  seems 
fairly  evident  that  guest  and  children 
exclude  each  other.  Milord  and  milady 
must  decide  between  hospitality  and 
race-suicide,  or  two  children  and  no 
week-end  visitor.  Some  will  choose 
guest;  some  will  choose  children.  Per 
sonally  I  hope  they  will  all  choose  chil 
dren;  for,  even  without  an  attic,  there 
is  plenty  of  playground.  '  People  with 
tiny  incomes'  must  always  be  careful 
not  to  purchase  too  small  a  lot;  and  so 
we  find  that  the  servantless  cottage  has 
paths,  and  a  lawn,  and  flowers,  and 
shrubbery,  and  a  sun-dial,  and  an 
American  elm,  and  a  'toadstool  can 
opy  '  between  the  poplars  and  the  white 
birches,  and  an  ivy-covered  'cache'  to 
store  the  trunks  in.  I  am  glad  there  is 
going  to  be  such  a  domestic  conven 
ience  as  a  sun-dial ;  and  perhaps,  when 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

there  is  a  guest,  the  trunks  can  be  taken 
out  on  the  lawn  and  the  children  put  to 
bed  in  the  'cache.' 

But  I  guess  that,  after  all,  stairs  will 
survive,  and  attics,  and  the  servant- 
problem.  Innumerable  families  are  al 
ready  living  in  servantless  houses,  with 
stairs,  and  it  does  n't  even  occur  to 
them  that  they  are  solving  any  prob 
lem  whatsoever.  Innumerable  house 
wives  are  about  as  happy  under  these 
conditions  as  most  of  us  get  to  be  under 
any  conditions.  The  servant-problem 
itself  is  not  the  young  and  tender  prob 
lem  that  many  of  us  imagine.  An  exam 
ination  of  old  newspapers  will  show  any 
body  who  is  sufficiently  patient  and 
curious  that  a  hundred  years  ago  there 
was  much  indignant  wonder  that  young 
women,  visibly  suited  for  domestic  serv 
ice,  preferred  to  be  seamstresses!  What 
is  more  modern  is  the  grave  enthusiasm 
52 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

with  which  so  many  persons  are  trying 
to  decide  how  the  rest  of  us  shall  live 
with  the  maximum  amount  of  comfort 
and  culture  for  the  minimum  expendi 
ture.  And  one  interesting  similarity 
between  many  of  these  suggestions  is 
their  passive  opposition  to  another  im 
portant  group  of  critics. 

'Have  large  families  or  perish  as  a 
nation!'  shriek  our  advisers  on  one 
hand.  '  Have  small  families  or  perish  as 
individuals!'  proclaim  our  advisers  on 
the  other. 

For  this  servantless  cottage  is  typical 
of  a  good  many  other  housing  sugges 
tions  in  which  the  essential  element  is 
the  small  family;  and  even  the  possibil 
ity  that  the  children  may  live  to  grow 
up  seems  to  have  been  left  out  of  con 
sideration.  Milord  and  milady,  I  imag 
ine,  have  chosen  children  instead  of  a 
guest.  These  children  (a  boy  and  girl, 

53 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

as  I  like  to  picture  them)  grow  up; 
marry;  settle  in  their  own  servantless 
cottages,  and  have  two  children  apiece. 
There  are  now  a  grandfather  and  a 
grandmother,  a  son  and  a  daughter,  a 
son-in-law  and  a  daughter-in-law,  and 
four  grandchildren.  In  each  servant- 
less  cottage  there  is  that  one  bedroom 
marked  'guest  or  children.'  Granting 
all  the  possibilities  of  the  ivy-covered 
'cache,' -  — and  now  the  trunks  will 
simply  have  to  be  taken  out  and  stood 
on  the  lawn  even  if  the  snow  does  fall 
on  them, —  milord  and  milady,  come 
Christmas  or  other  anniversary,  can 
entertain  a  visit  from  all  their  children 
and  grandchildren,  one  family  taking 
the  'guest  or  children'  bedroom,  and 
the  other  the  'cache.'  Later,  as  the 
children  grow  older,  each  family  will 
come  back  to  the  old  home  on  alternate 
Christmases:  and  by  utilizing  the 

54 


NO  STAIRS  — NO  ATTIC 

'cache,'  a  son  or  daughter  can  receive  a 
short  visit  from  the  aged  parents,  not 
too  long,  of  course,  or  it  would  ruin  the 
trunks.  As  for  any  of  the  hearty,  old- 
fashioned,  up-and-down-stairs  hospi 
tality  -  -  I  may  be  an  old  fogey  myself, 
but  the  servantless  cottage  shocks  me. 
'  Our  bedroom  resembles  a  cosy  state 
room  on  board  ship.'  Oh !  la-la-la-la-la! 
Why  does  n't  somebody  solve  the  prob 
lem  of  domestic  living  by  suggesting 
that  we  all  live  in  house-boats? 


CONCERNING  KITCHENS 

MANY  a  man,I  am  sure,  who  never 
in  his  mature  life  thinks  emo 
tionally  of  his  own  kitchen,  still  keeps 
a  tender  memory  of  some  kitchen  of 
his  early  youth.  It  may  have  been 
his  mother's,  his  grandmother's,  or  his 
Aunt  Susan's;  and  not  often,  but  once  in 
a  great  while,  something  reminds  him 
of  it.  His  thoughts  hark  back,  and  he 
touches,  in  his  own  degree,  the  emotion 
of  Uncle  Felix  (whom  you  will  reme'm- 
ber  if  you  have  ever  read  'The  Extra 
Day')  alone  at  night  in  Mrs.  Horton's 
kitchen. 

'  And  Uncle  Felix  traveled  backwards 
against  the  machinery  of  Time  that 
cheats  the  majority  so  easily  with  its 
convention  of  moving  hands  and  ticking 
voice  and  bullying,  staring  visage.  He 
56 


CONCERNING  KITCHENS 

slid  swiftly  down  the  long  banister- 
descent  of  years,  and  reached  in  a  flash 
that  old  sombre  Yorkshire  kitchen,  and 
stood,  four-foot  nothing,  face  smudged 
and  fingers  sticky,  beside  the  big  deal 
table  with  the  dying  embers  of  the  grate 
upon  his  right.  His  heart  was  beating. 
He  could  just  reach  the  juicy  cake  with 
out  standing  on  a  chair.  He  ate  the 
very  slice  that  he  had  eaten  forty  years 
ago.  It  was  possible  to  have  your  cake 
and  eat  it  too!' 

For  my  own  part,  —  and  no  doubt 
each  backward  traveler  has  his  par 
ticular  kitchen  memory,  --  I  ate  the 
crisp  brown  beans  off  the  top  of  the 
bean-pot.  It  was  a  sort  of  ceremonial; 
a  Saturday-night  function,  irrespective 
of  whatever  menial  might  at  the  time 
be  in  official  charge  of  our  kitchendom. 
The  baking  of  the  beans  was  never  alto 
gether  trusted  to  a  menial.  My  mother, 

57 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

last  thing  before  bed,  would  go  out  to 
the  kitchen,  lighting  her  way  with  a 
kerosene  lamp ;  and  I  with  her.  We  put 
the  lamp  on  the  table;  we  opened  the 
oven  door  —  and  all  over  the  kitchen 
spread  the  delectable,  mouth-watering 
aroma  of  the  baking  bean.  We  took 
out  the  bean-pot.  Then  we  scraped  off 
the  crisp  top  layer  of  the  beans  into  a 
saucer.  And  these  we  ate ! 

My  mother  wore  a  bustle,  and  at  that 
historic  period  there  were  no  kitchen 
ettes;  nor  had  the  Spirit  of  Efficiency 
inspired  the  thought  of  planning  your 
kitchen  with  a  route  for  food-prepara 
tion  which  makes  a  flying  start  at  the 
ice-chest,  takes  in  the  meat,  fish,  and 
vegetable  shelves,  touches  at  the  cab 
inet  for  dough-mixing,  skirts  the  pan 
cabinet,  and  so  (as  Master  Pepys  would 
say)  to  the  stove.  There  were  no  scien 
tifically  determined  routes  for  food-serv- 

58 


CONCERNING  KITCHENS 

ing  and  dish-washing.  Each  menial, 
and  my  mother  herself  between  menials, 
followed  a  kind  of  cow  path.  My 
mother  had  never  had  it  figured  out  for 
her  that  the  lowest  estimate  of  time 
spent  at  the  sink  alone  is  two  hours 
daily,  and  that  these  two  hours  a  day 
count  up  to  five  days  of  twelve  hours 
each  in  the  course  of  a  month,  or  sixty 
twelve-hour  days  at  the  sink  every  year. 
And  when,  as  the  expert  modern  kitchen- 
planner  points  out,  it  is  realized  that 
these  sixty  days  are  spent  in  useless 
stooping,  and  that,  to  this  strain,  is 
added  the  fatigue  of  miles  of  unnec 
essary  steps,  one  gets  an  idea  of  the 
kitchen  which  I  am  glad  to  think  never 
occurred  to  her. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  do  I  think 
my  mother  would  have  quite  followed 
the  mental  state  of  the  rhapsodist  who 
writes  of  housework  in  general,  - 

59 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

'When  I  am  about  the  house,  taking 
part  in  the  work,  I  am  of  course  con 
scious,  among  other  things,  of  the 
rhythmical  qualities  of  housework.  But 
when  I  stay  apart  from  it,  and  listen 
to  it,  it  comes  to  seem  all  rhythm,  both 
in  the  larger  sense  of  regular  recurrence 
of  tasks,  and  in  the  repetition  of  sounds 
with  insistent  ichthus  and  pause.  Iron 
ing,  for  example,  is  nearly  as  pleasant 
to  listen  to  as  to  watch.  Not  by 
one  stroke  of  the  iron,  but  by  many, 
is  the  linen  polished  and  the  cambric 
smoothed  to  a  satin  daintiness;  the 
blows  follow  one  another,  now  slowly, 
now  fast,  like  the  drum-beat  of  some 
strange  march.  There  is  rhythm  in  the 
kitchen;  rhythm  in  the  dining-room. 
.  .  .  Most  soothing  of  all  household 
rhythm  is  the  swish  of  the  broom.  It  is 
gentle  and  low-keyed.  It  takes  my 
attention  from  other  things,  and  makes 
60 


CONCERNING  KITCHENS 

me  think  of  abstractions.  I  wonder 
whether  there  is  not  some  mathematical 
calculation  by  which  a  ratio  can  be  es 
tablished  between  power  of  stroke, 
length  of  arm,  and  good -will.  And  so 
speculating  I  sink  into  comfortable 
depths  of  nothingness.' 

Oh,  shade  of  Mary  Ann,  the  Perfect 
Servant  Girl ! 

But  this  digression  into  the  'ichthus 
and  pause'  of  housework  —  I  seem  to 
hear  my  mother,  'Who  is  the  lunatic?' 
-  takes  me  away  from  the  kitchen. 
I  hurry  back  to  it,  for,  although  it  is 
not  a  place  where  I  wish  to  live,  it  is 
very  much  a  place  where  I  like  to  visit. 
Though  not  with  the  cook.  When  I 
was  younger,  I  enjoyed  visiting  with 
the  cook,  but  the  years  have  separated 
us;  I  have,  as  it  were,  grown  apart 
from  her.  Granting  her  absence,  there 
is  a  homely,  cheery  informality  about 
61 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

a  kitchen;  and  if  the  lady  of  the  house 
will  take  you  there  herself,  some  rainy 
afternoon  in  the  country,  and  serve 
tea  on  the  clean,  plain  table,  and 
let  you  butter  the  toasted  crackers 
yourself,  with  all  the  butter  you  please, 
why,  for  my  part,  I  ask  no  more  this 
side  of  Paradise.  To  use  a  quaint  old 
obsolete  word,  I  like  to  be  'kitchened' 
-  provided,  of  course,  that  I  may  se 
lect  my  kitchener.  So,  I  understand, 
does  the  policeman:  our  tastes  are  dif 
ferent,  but  we  are  both  human. 

And  yet  this  kitchen,  as  we  know  it 
to-day,  is  comparatively  recent,  and 
already  insidiously  passing  away  from 
the  larger  cities  to,  I  hope,  a  long  survi 
val  in  the  country  and  suburbs.  If  I 
were  of  an  older  generation  (also  insid 
iously  passing  away) ,  I  would  be  able  to 
recall  another  kind  of  kitchen,  where 
colonial  customs  of  cookery  held  sway 
62 


CONCERNING  KITCHENS 

well  into  the  twentieth  century.  To  me 
the  stove  seems  ancient  only  because, 
thank  God!  I  am  not  ancient  myself;  I 
find  it  hard  to  believe  that  when  my 
grandmother  bought  her  stove,  her  up- 
to-date  spirit  marched  bravely  from  one 
period  of  kitchendom  into  another. 
But  men  still  living  remember  how  their 
very  mothers  baked  bread  in  a  brick 
oven,  and  have  seen  in  operation  many 
of  the  queer  old  cooking  things  we 
somewhat  younger  mortals  wonder  at 
in  museums.  Only  a  bit  further  back, 
the  fireplace,  at  its  most  generous,  had 
room  for  a  seat  in  the  corner,  and 
grandmother  sat  there, —  it  was  really 
what  the  kitchen-planners  would  call  a 
rest  corner, —  sometimes,  comfortable 
old  creature,  smoking  her  honest  pipe 
and  observing  the  stars  by  daytime  as 
she  watched  the  smoke  on  its  journey 
up  the  big  chimney.  But  the  new- 

63 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

fangled  kitchen  range  was  much  more 
convenient;  the  easier  management  of  a 
coal  fire  made  a  new  day  in  household 
economics;  a  delighted  generation  bus 
ily  bricked  up  the  fireplaces.  And  so 
the  sturdy  useful  kitchen  stove  is  not  so 
very  ancient;  and  the  homely,  hospita 
ble  kitchen,  even  of  our  childhood  mem 
ory,  is  still  so  new  that  only  to-day  is 
the  Spirit  of  Efficiency  providing  it 
with  routes  of  travel  to  save  those 
wasted  steps  that  mother  used  to  take, 
and  a  cosy  rest  corner,  cunningly  placed 
to  solace  the  soul  of  a  tired  cook  with 
prophylactic  contemplation  of  the  most 
restful  available  scenery. 

All  day  long  on  the  kitchen  routes 

Her  helpful  feet  have  gone, 
With  never  a  senseless,  wasted  step 

Between  the  dusk  and  dawn; 

And  now,  dear  soul,  at  the  kitchen  sink 
She  has  washed  the  final  spoon, 

And  sat  her  down  in  her  rest  corner 
To  look  at  the  rising  moon. 

64 


CONCERNING   KITCHENS 

But  the  life  of  our  larger  cities  is 
growingly  inimical  to  kitchens.  In  the 
more  distinguished  sections,  unfortu 
nately,  one  must  be  more  than  ordinarily 
well-to-do  to  live  in  a  house  that  has  a 
kitchen :  otherwise  one  lives  in  an  apart 
ment  and  has  a  kitchenette.  In  my 
bright  lexicon,  published  by  the  Cen 
tury  Company  in  1889,  there  is  no  such 
word.  The  thing  did  not  exist.  This 
Peter  Pan  of  domestic  institutions,  the 
baby  kitchen  that  never  grows  up,  had 
yet  to  be  born.  And  a  great  army  of 
other  equally  unborn  babies,  who  would 
be  shrewdly  created  male  and  female, 
waited  in  the  mystery  of  non-existence 
until  such  time  as  they,  too,  should 
enter  upon  life,  grow  up,  discover  each 
other  in  happily  surprised  couples,  love, 
marry,  and  set  up  housekeeping  with 
two  rooms,  a  bath,  and  a  kitchenette. 
It  was  then  impossible  —  though  I  have 

65 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

since  done  it  myself  —  for  a  gentleman 
to  take  his  morning  bath,  shave,  and 
cook  the  breakfast  all  at  the  same  time, 
stepping  with  accurate  judgment  out  of 
his  porcelain  bath-tub  and  into  the  con 
tiguous  kitchenette,  and  so  back  and 
forth,  bathing,  lathering,  shaving,  per 
colating  the  coffee,  and  turning  the 
toast.  Perhaps,  also,  humming  a  little 
tune. 

Here,  too,  as  the  rhapsodist  I  have 
already  quoted  would  say,  is  rhythm; 
nor  is  it  impossible  that  the  same  imag 
ination  would  find  a  wild  yet  orderly 
beauty  in  the  design  extemporized  by 
his  wet  footprints  between  his  kitchen 
ette  and  his  bath-tub. 

But  the  thing  is  n't  a  kitchen,  though 
it  serves  many  of  the  kitchen's  practical 
purposes.  It  lacks  the  space,  dignity, 
comfort,  and  opportunity  for  helpful 
conversation.  I  cannot  imagine  any 
66 


CONCERNING   KITCHENS 

gentleman  of  the  future  recalling  with 
poignant  pleasure  his  childhood  kitch 
enette.  In  fact,  I  cannot  even  imagine  a 
child  in  a  kitchenette. 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

DID  you  ever,'  said  he,  'know  a 
plumber  who  had  grown  rich?' 
We  stood  in  the  kitchen.  Outdoors 
it  was  a  wonderful  winter  morning, 
snow-white  and  sparkling,  felt  rather 
than  seen  through  frosted  windows,  for 
the  mercury  last  night  had  dropped 
below  zero,  and,  although  reported  on 
the  way  up,  was  not  climbing  with  real 
enthusiasm.  On  the  floor  was  a  little 
sea  of  water,  in  shape  something  like 
the  Mediterranean,  with  Gibraltar  out 
of  sight  under  the  kitchen  sink.  The 
stove  (unfortunately)  had  been  lighted ; 
and  a  strange,  impassive  boy  stood  be 
side  it,  holding  in  pendant  hands  vari 
ous  tools  of  the  plumber's  craft.  The 
plumber  stood  in  the  Mediterranean. 
And  I,  in  my  slippers  and  bath-robe,  - 
68 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

a  foolish  costume,  for  the  sea  was  not 
deep  enough  to  bathe  in,  -  -  hovered, 
so  to  speak,  on  the  edge  of  the  beach. 

I  suppose  I  wished  to  impress  this 
plumber  with  my  imperturbable  calm. 
Upset  as  I  was,  I  must  have  realized  the 
impossibility  of  impressing  the  boy. 
Swaggering  a  little  in  my  bath-robe, 
I  had  said  something  jocular,  I  do  not 
remember  just  what,  about  the  rapid 
accretion  of  wealth  by  plumbers.  He 
lit  his  pipe.  'Did  you  ever,'  said  he, 
'know  a  plumber  who  had  grown  rich?' 

Now  until  that  winter  I  had  never 
thought  of  the  plumber  as  a  man  in 
many  respects  like  myself.  One  may 
winter  for  years  in  a  city  apartment 
without  meeting  a  plumber,  but  hardly 
without  reading  a  good  many  humor 
ous  trifles  about  them  in  current  litera 
ture  ;  and  my  idea  of  this  craftsman  had 
been  insidiously  formed  by  the  minor 
69 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

humorists.  Summer,  in  my  experience, 
had  been  a  plumberless  period,  in  which 
water  flowed  freely  through  the  pipes  of 
my  house,  and  gushed  obligingly  from 
faucets  at  the  touch  of  a  finger.  It 
was  like  an  invisible  brook;  and,  like 
a  brook,  I  thought  of  it  (if  I  thought  of 
it  at  all)  as  going  on  forever.  Nothing 
worse  happened  than  a  leak  at  the  fau 
cet.  And  when  that  happens  I  can  fix 
it  myself.  All  it  needs  is  a  new  washer. 
I  run  down  cellar  and  turn  off  the 
water.  I  run  up  from  the  cellar  and 
take  off  the  faucet.  I  put  in  the  new 
washer,  which  is  like  a  very  fat  leather 
ring  for  a  very  thin  finger,  and  screw  on 
the  faucet.  I  run  down  cellar,  turn  on 
the  water,  run  up  from  the  cellar,  and 
look  at  the  faucet.  It  still  leaks.  So  I 
run  down  cellar,  turn  off  the  water,  run 
up  from  the  cellar,  take  off  the  faucet, 
make  some  slight  alteration  in  the  size, 
70 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

shape,  or  position  of  the  washer,  put 
on  the  faucet,  run  down  cellar,  turn  on 
the  water,  run  up  from  the  cellar,  and 
look  at  the  faucet.  If  it  still  leaks  (as  is 
rather  to  be  expected),  I  repeat  as  be 
fore  ;  and  if  it  the n  leaks  (as  is  more  than 
likely),  I  run  down  cellar,  turn  off  the 
water,  run  up  from  the  cellar,  take  off 
the  faucet,  make  some  slight  alteration 
in  the  size,  shape,  or  position  of  the 
washer,  put  on  the  faucet,  run  down 
cellar,  turn  on  the  water,  run  up  from 
the  cellar,  and  look  at  the  faucet.  Per 
haps  it  leaks  more.  Perhaps  it  leaks 
less.  So  I  run  down  cellar  —  and  turn 
off  the  water  -  -  and  run  up  from  the 
cellar  —  and  take  off  the  faucet.  Then, 
talking  aloud  to  myself,  I  take  out  the 
new  washer,  throw  it  on  the  floor, 
stamp  on  it,  kick  it  out  of  the  way,  put 
in  a  newer  washer,  put  on  the  faucet, 
run  down  cellar,  turn  on  the  water,  run 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

up  from  the  cellar,  and  look  at  the  fau 
cet.  If  (and  this  may  happen)  it  still 
leaks,  I  make  queer,  inarticulate,  ani 
mal  noises;  but  I  run  down  cellar,  turn 
off  the  water,  run  up  from  the  cellar, 
and  take  off  the  faucet.  Then  I  mon 
key  a  little  with  the  washer  (still  mak 
ing  those  queer  animal  noises),  put  on 
the  faucet,  run  down  cellar,  turn  on  the 
water,  run  up  from  the  cellar,  and  look 
at  the  faucet.  Sooner  or  later  the  faucet 
always  stops  leaking.  It  is  a  mere  mat 
ter  of  adjusting  the  washer;  any  handy 
man  can  do  it  with  a  little  patience. 

Winter  in  the  country  is  the  time  and 
place  to  get  acquainted  with  the 
plumber.  And  I  would  have  you  re 
member,  even  in  that  morning  hour  when 
the  ordinary  life  of  your  home  has  stop 
ped  in  dismay,  and  then  gone  limping 
toward  breakfast  with  the  help  of  buck 
ets  of  water  generously  loaned  you 
72 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

by  your  nearest  neighbor,  -  -  rarely,  if 
ever,  does  he  carry  his  generosity  so 
far  as  to  help  carry  the  buckets,  - 
that  because  of  this  honest  soul  in  over 
alls,  winter  has  lost  the  terrors  which  it 
held  for  your  great-grandfather. 

Revisit  your  library,  and  note  what 
the  chroniclers  of  the  past  thought 
about  winter  -  'this  cousin  to  Death, 
father  to  sickness,  and  brother  to  old 
age'  (as  Thomas  Dekker  bitterly  called 
it;  and  well  would  your  great-grand 
father  have  agreed  with  him),  when 
'the  first  word  that  a  wench  speaks  on 
your  coming  into  a  room  in  the  morn 
ing  is, "  Prithee  send  for  some  faggots." 
It  is  bad  enough  when — to  adapt  Dek- 
ker's  sixteenth-century  phraseology  — 
the  first  word  that  a  wench  speaks  on 
your  coming  into  a  room  in  the  morn 
ing  is,  '  Prithee  send  for  a  plumber ' ; 
but  how  seldom  it  happens!  And  be- 

73 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

cause  we  can  send  for  a  plumber,  our 
attitude  toward  winter  is  joyfully 
changed  for  the  better:  lovely  autumn 
is  no  longer  regarded  as  melancholy  be 
cause  winter  is  coming,  nor  is  backward 
spring  esteemed  beyond  criticism  be 
cause  winter  is  over. 

Those  good  old  days,  after  the  sun 
had  entered  Capricorn,  were  cold  and 
inconvenient  old  days.  Observe  great 
grandfather:  all  his  plumbing  was  a 
pump,  which  often  froze  beyond  his  sim 
ple  skill  in  plumbery;  and  then  he  drew 
water  from  the  well  in  a  dear  old  oaken 
bucket  (as  we  like  to  think  of  it),  emp 
tied  it  into  other  buckets,  and  carried 
it  by  hand,  even  as  a  man  now  carries 
the  water  loaned  him  by  his  generous 
neighbor,  wherever  the  useful,  unin- 
toxicating  fluid  was  needed.  No  invis 
ible  brook  flowed  through  his  house, 
and  gushed  obligingly  at  faucets,  hot 

74 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

or  cold  according  to  great-grandfath 
er's  whim;  no  hot-water  pipes  suffused 
his  dwelling  with  grateful  warmth. 
These  are  our  blessings  --  and  it  is  the 
plumber,  with  only  a  boy  to  help  him, 
who  contends  manfully  against  the 
forces  of  nature,  and  keeps  them  going. 
For  the  life  of  the  house  depends  now 
adays  on  its  healthy  circulation  of 
water;  and  when  the  house  suffers  from 
arteriosclerosis,  the  plumber  is  the  doc 
tor,  and  the  strange,  impassive  boy  is 
the  trained  nurse. 

Sometimes  in  an  emergency  he  ar 
rives  without  this  little  companion:  I 
have  myself,  rising  to  the  same  occa 
sion,  taken  the  boy's  place.  I  was  a 
good  boy.  The  plumber  admitted  it. 
'  Fill  th'  kettle  again  with  hot  water  off 
th'  stove,  'said  he,  over  his  arched  back, 
as  he  peered  shrewdly  down  a  pipe  to 
see  how  far  away  it  was  frozen,  'there's 

75 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

th'  good  boy.'  Thus  I  know  that  the 
boy  is  not,  as  our  minor  humorists 
would  have  us  believe,  a  mere  flourish 
and  gaudy  appanage  to  the  plumber's 
autocratically  assumed  grandeur.  His 
strange,  impassive  manner  is  probably 
nothing  more  or  less  than  concentra 
ted  attention;  it  is  as  if  he  said,  with 
Hamlet,  'Yea,  from  the  table  of  my 
memory  I'll  wipe  away  all  foolish,  fond 
regards,  all  saws  of  books,  all  forms,  all 
pressures  past,  that  youth  and  obser 
vation  copied  there;  and  thy  command 
ment  all  alone  shall  live  within  the  book 
and  volume  of  my  brain,  unmixed  with 
baser  matter.  Yes,  by  Heaven ! ' 

Even  in  putting  in  a  new  washer, 
I  should  do  better  with  a  boy. 

The  most  nervous  and  conscientious 

plumber,  I  tell  you,  must  at  intervals 

appear,   to   an   observer  unacquainted 

with  the  art  and  mystery  of  plumbery, 

76 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

to  be  proceeding  in  a  leisurely  and  per 
haps  idle  fashion.  The  most  method 
ical  and  conscientious  man,  plumber 
or  not,  will  occasionally  forget  some 
thing,  and  have  to  go  back  for  it.  The 
most  self-respecting  and  conscientious 
minor  humorist,  after  he  has  exhausted 
his  witty  invention  making  a  joke  on  a 
plumber,  will  try  to  sell  it  for  the  high 
est  possible  price.  And  if  I,  for  ex 
ample,  am  a  little  proud  of  my  ability, 
greater  than  the  plumber's,  to  write  an 
essay,  how  shall  I  accuse  him  of  arro 
gance  if  he  is  a  little  proud  of  his  abil 
ity,  greater  than  mine,  to  accomplish 
the  more  necessary  feat  of  thawing  a 
frozen  water-pipe? 

He  has  a  heart. 

When  I  was  a  plumber's  boy  myself, 
I  walked  with  my  boss  to  his  office  in 
the  village  to  get  a  tool.  It  was  a 
Sunday  afternoon:  I  remember  that  a 

77 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

rooster  crowed  afar  off,  and  how  his 
lonely  clarion  enhanced  and  made  more 
gravely  quiet  the  peace  of  the  Sabbath. 
And  the  plumber  said, '  I  would  n't  have 
felt  right,  sitting  at  home  by  the  fire 
reading  the  paper,  when  I  knew  you 
was  in  trouble  and  I  could  pull  you  out.' 
He  had  come,  mark  you,  in  his  Sunday 
clothes;  he  had  come  in  his  best,  not 
pausing  even  for  his  overalls,  so  that, 
in  our  distressed,  waterless  home,  the 
lady  of  the  house  had  herself  encircled 
his  honest  waist  with  a  gingham  apron 
before  he  began  plumbing.  And  in  all 
the  world  there  was  nobody  else  whom 
we  would  have  been  so  glad  to  see. 

And  so,  bowing,  with  my  left  hand 
over  what  I  take  to  be  the  region  of  a 
grateful  heart,  I  extend  him  this 
praise  of  plumber.  No  plumber  came 
over  in  the  Mayflower;  but  think  not, 
for  that  reason,  that  he  is  a  parvenu.  He 

78 


THE  PLUMBER  APPRECIATED 

is  of  ancient  lineage  -  -  this  good  fairy 
in  overalls  of  our  invisible  brooks.  The 
Romans  knew  him  as  the  artifex  plum- 
bar  eus.  Caesar  may  have  interrupted 
the  revision  of  the  Commentaries  to  send 
for  him.  He  disappeared,  with  civiliza 
tion  and  water-pipes,  in  the  Dark  Ages ; 
he  came  back,  with  civilization  and 
water-pipes,  when  the  darkness  lifted. 
Neglected  by  Art,  disregarded  by  Ro 
mance,  and  unconsidered  by  the  drama, 
these  rich  and  entertaining  expressions 
of  life  are  as  nothing  when  his  presence 
is  called  for. 

We  may  live  without  painters 

Or  writers  or  mummers, 
But  civilized  man  cannot 

Live  without  plumbers. 

He,  too,  should  have  his  statue,  not 
of  bronze,  marble,  or  granite,  but  of 
honest  lead,  with  two  figures  -  -  the 
Plumber,  holding  aloft  his  torch,  and 

79 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

the  Plumber's  Boy,  strange,  impassive, 
and  holding  in  his  pendant  hands  a 
monkey  wrench  and  the  coil  of  flexible 
tubing  with  which  his  master  cunningly 
directs  hot  water  into  the  hardened  ar 
teries  of  a  suffering  house.  And  on  his 
pedestal  I  would  carve  the  motto,  - 

'Did    You   Ever    Know    a    Plumber 
Who  Had  Grown  Rich?' 


THE  HOME  OF  THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

I  AM  very  glad,'  wrote  Lord  Chester 
field  to  young  Mr.  Stanhope,  July 
30,  1749,  'that  my  letter,  with  Dr. 
Shaw's  opinion,  has  lessened  your  bath 
ing;  for,  since  I  was  born,  I  never  heard 
of  bathing  four  hours  a  day.' 

Lord  Chesterfield's  surprise  at  the 
duration  of  his  son's  bath  still  leaves  us 
wondering  how  that  daily  ablution  was 
performed  in  1749.  Young  Mr.  Stan 
hope  lived  a  long,  long  time  before  our 
Bath-Room  Era,  when  every  well-to-do 
home  has  a  bath-room,  and  the  daily 
bath  is  as  natural  a  topic  of  conver 
sation  in  polite  society  as  the  daily 
weather.  He  might,  twenty  years  la 
ter,  have  gone  to  Dominicetti  for  the 
famous  medicated  bath  which  led  Dr. 
Johnson  to  say  to  a  gentleman  who  be- 
81 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

lieved  in  it,  'Well,  sir,  go  to  Domini- 
cetti,  and  get  thyself  fumigated,  but  be 
sure  that  the  steam  be  directed  at  thy 
head  for  that  is  the  peccant  part.'  Prob 
ably  he  bathed  at  home:  a  tin  tub  was 
brought  by  a  menial  into  his  apartment, 
filled  with  hot  and  cold  water,  tested  for 
temperature,  and  the  young  man  left 
alone  with  it.  But,  although  this  was 
better  than  no  bath  at  all,  it  had  serious 
disadvantages.  When  the  water  cooled, 
Mr.  Stanhope  had  perforce  to  summon 
the  menial,  and  either  retire  to  his 
closet  or  remain  sitting  in  his  tub  while 
the  bath  was  reheated.  Convention 
ally,  I  suppose,  he  was  considered  in 
visible  to  the  menial.  If  he  splashed  he 
splashed  on  the  carpet ;  and  when  the 
tub  was  carried  away,  however  care 
fully,  it  left  a  damp  spot.  He  had  to 
hang  his  towel  on  one  chair,  and  his 
clothes  on  another.  His  soap  must  have 
82 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

embarrassed  him.  According  to  all 
modern  standards  it  was  a  makeshift 
kind  of  a  bath. 

We  have  changed  all  that.  In  every 
house  is  a  bath-room,  so  much  like  the 
bath-room  in  every  other  house  that  a 
stranger  guest  feels  more  immediately 
at  home  there  than  anywhere  else.  We 
bathe  daily,  and  talk  about  it  in  public: 
or,  to  be  exact,  many  bathe,  and  even 
more  talk.  We  have  become  skilled  - 
I  am  referring,  of  course,  to  that  impor 
tant  section  of  society  whose  members, 
often  otherwise  useless,  all  together  es 
tablish  the  amenities  of  civilization  - 
in  leading  conversation  tactfully  up  to 
this  topic.  A  few  avoid  it,  but  these  are 
of  a  passing  generation,  and  regard  even 
the  porcelain  tub  with  disfavor.  It  is, 
so  they  say,  dangerous:  a  treacherous, 
slippery  contraption  that  you  have  to 
be  careful  getting  in  and  out  of.  The 

83 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

mid-Victorian  bath-room,  with  its 
painted  tin  tub  built  in  by  a  carpenter, 
suits  them  better.  If  perchance  their 
eyes  fall  on  this  essay,  they  will  close 
the  book  hastily,  perhaps  destroy  it, 
for  in  their  time  nice  people  did  not  talk, 
nor  essayists  write,  about  baths  and 
bath-rooms.  It  was  as  much  as  ever  if 
an  author  hinted,  by  some  guarded, 
casual  reference  to  soap  when  his  hero 
came  down  to  breakfast,  that  the  dash 
ing,  well-groomed  fellow  had  but  just 
risen  from  a  tub.  Only  heroes  admit 
tedly  took  morning  baths.  Occasion 
ally  a  heroine  may  have  —  but  wild 
horses  couldn't  have  dragged  the  in 
formation  out  of  her;  and  the  boldest 
novelist  would  have  held  back  from 
admitting  that  he  knew  anything  about 
it.  Indeed,  how  could  he? 

But  a  different  point  of  view  came  in 
with  the  porcelain  bath  tub,  which,  as 
84 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

an  advertisement  so  justly  intimates,  is 
less  like  a  tub  than  like  a  great  white 
china  dish.  One  had  to  talk  about  it. 
It  dignified  the  bath-room;  it  added 
beauty  to  bathing  (which  had  hitherto 
depended  entirely  on  the  bather),  and 
at  the  same  time  struck  peremptorily 
that  keynote  of  simplicity  which  has 
since  remained  the  bath-room's  distin 
guishing  characteristic.  The  white  pu 
rity  of  the  tub  forbids  the  introduction 
of  any  jarring  note  of  unnecessary  deco 
ration  :  one  cannot  imagine  a  bath-room 
with  pictures  on  the  walls,  a  well-chosen 
bit  of  statuary  in  the  window,  and  pho 
tographs  on  the  shelf  under  the  neces 
sary  mirror  —  except  sometimes  the 
photograph  of  the  gentleman  who  in 
vented  the  talcum  powder.  Even  the 
rug  that  lies  in  front  of  the  tub  is  always 
inscribed  BATH,  yet  here,  if  anywhere, 
the  home  of  the  porcelain  tub  might  be 

85 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

given  a  touch  of  originality.  Another 
motto  might  be  substituted  for  BATH. 
-  'Welcome,  Bather.'  '  Dine  and  the 
world  dines  with  you;  bathe,  and  you 
bathe  alone.'  '  I  am  always 'drier  on  the 
other  side,'  etc.  But  the  bath-room, 
after  all,  is  nobody's  single  possession, 
and  the  motto  that  pleased  one  bather 
might  seem  a  false  note  to  another. 
Perhaps  it  is  wiser  to  stick  to  BATH, 
and  rest  content  with  providing  at 
their  best  those  commonplaces  which 
would  have  seemed  such  luxuries  to 
Mr.  Stanhope — the  soap  (imagine  his 
delight)  that  floats,  and  the  shower 
(imagine  his  astonishment)  that  sim 
ulates  the  fall  of  rain  from  heaven. 
I  am  surprised,  however,  that  no  man 
ufacturer  of  porcelain  bath-tubs  has 
yet  thought  to  embellish  his  product 
with  the  legend  in  golden  letters:  'One 
for  All  —  and  All  for  One.' 
86 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

I  am  speaking,  you  understand,  of 
the  bath-room  ordinaire.  There  are,  I 
believe,  bath-rooms  de  luxe,  in  which 
the  bather,  soap  and  sponge  in  hand, 
gravely  descends  white  marble  steps 
into  the  bath.  I  have  never  done  this 
myself;  but  I  can  see  that  gravely  de 
scending  marble  steps  has  more  per 
sonal  dignity  about  it  than  the  com 
moner  method  of  entering  the  bath  by 
climbing  over  the  side  of  the  tub.  It  is 
like  a  low  white  wall:  and  only  a  little 
imagination  is  necessary  to  feel  that 
there  may  be  a  sign  somewhere,— 

No  Bathing  in  This  Tub. 

Police  Take  Notice. 
But  the  gain  is  temporary.  Sooner  or 
later,  in  either  case,  the  bather  must  sit 
down  —  and  where  then  is  his  personal 
dignity?  I  have  read  also  of  bath-tubs 
made  of  glass:  but  here  the  effort  to 
attain  distinction  is  too  transparent. 

87 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

And  then  there  is  a  patent  combination 
kitchen-and-bath-room :  quite  rare:  I 
hardly  know  how  to  describe  it :  perhaps 
an  excerpt  from  the  unpublished  novel 
'  Mary  Brogan '  :— 

'Mary  felt  tired,  too  tired  to  go  out 
to  the  movies.  The  "words"  that  had 
passed  between  her  and  Mrs.  Mont 
gomery  that  morning,  justified  as  Mary 
felt  in  her  unwillingness  to  have  another 
woman's  child  messing  about  in  her 
kitchen  —  although  smacking  little  Al 
bert  had  perhaps  been  a  too  objective 
way  of  expressing  this  natural  disincli 
nation  —  had  distressed  a  native  refine 
ment  which  it  would  have  surprised 
haughty  Mrs.  Montgomery  to  be  told 
was  greater  in  her  cook  than  in  herself. 
Albert  had  been  properly  smacked,  and 
there  should  have  been  an  end  of  it. 
Nevertheless  Mary  Brogan  felt  tired. 
Was  this  all  of  life  —  smacking  Albert 
88 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

and  "rowing"  with  his  mother?  She 
finished  washing  and  wiping  the  dishes 
slowly,  put  them  away  in  the  pantry, 
and  sat  down  by  the  stove.  It  seemed 
as  if  there  was  really  nothing  left  in 
the  world  that  a  girl  could  do  to  amuse 
herself. 

'All  at  once,  as  if  the  friendly  stove 
had  suggested  it,  Mary  remembered 
that  this  was  her  night  to  take  a  bath. 

'  Mary  Brogan's  kitchen  was  pro 
vided  with  a  remarkable  invention  to 
economize  space  and  encourage  a  hy 
gienic  habit.  Most  of  the  time  it  was  a 
sink  for  Mary  to  wash  the  dishes,  Mon 
day  it  was  a  couple  of  convenient  laun 
dry  tubs  for  Mary  to  wash  the  clothes, 
and  once  a  week  it  was  a  fine  large  por 
celain  bath-tub  for  Mary  to  wash  her 
self.  Mary  called  it  the  "Three  in 
Wan."  She  locked  the  doors  and  pulled 
down  the  window  shades,  so  that  she 
89 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

could  neither  be  interrupted  from  within 
the  house  nor  observed  from  without. 
And  then,  going  to  the  sink,  she  turned 
the  cosy  kitchen  into  a  laundry,  and  the 
laundry  into  a  bath-room.' 

Such  bath-rooms,  fortunately,  re 
main  exceptions  to  a  desirable  rule  of 
uniformity.  The  bath-room  de  luxe  is 
rare:  it  is  possible  that  you,  gentle 
reader,  may  gravely  descend  those  mar 
ble  steps,  but  it  is  very  unlikely.  Mary 
Brogan's  bath-room  (which,  by  the 
way,  revives  the  colonial  custom  of 
bathing  in  the  wash-tub)  is  a  tour  de 
force  of  invention  that  is  obviously  in 
convenient  for  general  family  use.  The 
glass  tub  is  more  dangerous.  It  appeals 
to  the  fancy  with  its  indirect  suggestion 
of  Cinderella's  slipper.  Here  and  there 
already  a  householder  has  installed  one ; 
and  the  stranger  guest  feels  stranger 
than  ever  when  he  takes  a  bath  in  it. 
90 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

One  might  get  used  to  it,  much  as  one 
would  at  first  feel  like  a  goldfish  with 
out  room  enough  to  swim;  but  there 
should  be  no  rivalry  between  glass  and 
porcelain.  The  tin  tub  passes:  let  the 
bath-tubs  of  the  future  be  all  of  porce 
lain  or  all  of  glass. 

Let  us  then  tacitly  agree  to  preserve 
the  fine  and  simple  integrity  of  the 
bath-room,  with  its  slight,  almost  un- 
noticeable  variations  in  wall-paper  and 
the  choice  and  arrangement  of  its  nor 
mal  impedimenta.  Surely  we  do  not 
want  the  home  of  the  porcelain  tub  to 
express  any  single,  compelling,  indi 
vidual  personality:  to  say,  in  effect,  'I 
am  H.  Titherington  Lee's  bath-room,' 
or  'Betty  Martin's,'  rather  than,  as 
now,  'I  am  the  Bath-Room.'  Let  Mr. 
Lee,  if  he  will,  have  his  initials,  H.  T.  L.f 
in  gold  on  his  tooth-brush:  but  let  him 
not  have  them  lettered  on  the  white 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

porcelain  of  the  tub,  or  woven,  instead 
of  BATH,  into  the  rug  in  front  of  it. 
Uniformity,  indeed,  might  comfort 
ably  be  carried  a  little  further,  so  that 
all  bath-rooms  should  be  equally  warm 
and  sunny  of  a  winter's  morning.  One 
might  think,  sometimes,  that  people 
who  build  houses  had  considered  the 
bath-room  after  everything  else.  The 
plans  seem  complete,  and  yet  there  is  a 
vague  conviction  that  something  im 
portant  has  been  left  out.  They  go  over 
them  again  and  again,  room  by  room: 
surely  everything  is  as  it  should  be  — 
but  the  vague  conviction  still  haunts 
them,  and  they  have  to  put  it  out  of 
their  minds  by  force.  The  house  is 
built:  they  move  in,  and  somebody 
decides  to  take  a  bath.  He  starts  for 
the  bath-room.  Presently  his  voice  is 
heard,  annoyed,  astonished,  and  finally 
alarmed,  anxiously  shouting  for  the 
92 


THE  PORCELAIN  TUB 

rest  of  the  family.  Together  they  go 
over  the  house  from  top  to  bottom. 
There  is  no  bath-room!  Luckily,  on 
the  coldest  side  of  the  house  and  far 
away  from  the  furnace,  there  is  a  small 
hall  bedroom  intended  for  an  emer 
gency.  The  emergency  has  arrived :  the 
hall  bedroom  is  called  for.  In  the  short 
est  possible  time  the  nearest  plumber 
and  carpenter  make  it  over  into  a  home 
for  the  tub. 

But  the  ideal  bath-room  will  have  a 
southeasterly  exposure,  and  the  new- 
risen  sun,  that  saw  young  Adam  bath 
ing  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  will  look 
cheerily  in  and  add  a  sun  bath.  Place 
it  not  too  near  the  guest  chamber,  for 
your  guest  is  not  sorry  to  be  met  on  his 
way  thither,  clad  in  that  gorgeous  and 
becoming  robe  in  which  otherwise  you 
will  never  see  him.  And  do  not  clutter 
it,  as  some  do,  with  extraneous  objects. 

93 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

I  remember  a  bath-room  in  which  stood 
incongruously  a  child's  rocking-horse. 
It  gave  the  tub  a  kind  of  instability: 
and  every  time  I  looked  at  the  rocking- 
horse,  it  seemed  to  rock. 


AT  HOME  IN  THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

ABOUT  twenty-five  years  ago  the 
late  F.  Marion  Crawford  came 
to  lecture  in  a  New  England  city:  he 
was  entertained  in  one  of  the  most 
charming  houses,  given  an  afternoon  re 
ception,  and  led  to  the  guest  chamber, 
where  he  was  left  alone  to  rest  until  it 
should  be  time  to  appear  at  the  lecture 
hall.  It  was  an  impressive  guest  cham 
ber,  furnished  in  rare  colonial  mahog 
any;  but  the  day  after,  the  family 
looked  at  it  and  suddenly  wondered, 
with  misgivings,  how  Mr.  Crawford  had 
managed  his  resting.  He  was  an  un 
usually  tall,  large  man.  Had  he,  they 
asked  each  other,  rested  on  the  digni 
fied  four-poster  bed?  —  and  if  so,  how 
considerately  he  had  removed  all  traces 
of  his  little  holiday!  Or  had  he  rested 
95 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

on  either  of  the  rare  old  colonial  chairs 
-  or  both  together,  using  one  for  his 
feet?  They  were  a  joy  to  look  at,  but 
hard,  straight-backed,  and  unpromising 
resting  places  for  a  large  literary  man 
storing  energy  to  deliver  a  lecture.  Had 
he  rested  on  the  floor?  It  was  a  reful- 
gently  polished  floor,  but  Mr.  Crawford 
might  have  softened  it  by  putting  two 
of  the  rugs  together  and  rolling  up  a 
third  for  a  pillow.  If  so,  how  courte 
ously  he  had  restored  the  rugs  to  their 
normal  positions!  The  final  conclusion 
was  that  he  had  rested  sitting  bolt  up 
right  on  one  rare  old  colonial  chair 
until  he  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and 
then  sitting  bolt  upright  on  the  other. 
He  never  came  back ;  but  it  was  deci 
ded  in  the  family  that  the  next  distin 
guished  person  left  alone  to  rest  in  the 
guest  chamber  should  at  least  have  a 
rocking-chair. 

96 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

At  that  period  guests  were  not  ex 
pected  to  stay  in  a  guest  chamber  longer 
than  was  necessary  to  sleep,  wash  their 
faces  and  hands,  brush  their  hair,  and 
change  their  clothes.  It  was,  literally, 
a  spare  room.  If  you  came  to  visit,  you 
were  supposed  to  come  because  you 
wished  to  be  with  the  family  as  much 
as  possible,  and  only  the  most  needful 
provision  was  made  for  your  separate 
existence.  If  you  were  a  lady,  you 
might  retire  for  a  while  in  the  daytime, 
and  lie  down  on  the  bed.  But  no  gen 
tleman  had  this  privilege:  only  at  bed 
time  could  he  go  to  bed,  unless  unexpect 
edly  taken  so  ill  that  he  had  to  be  put 
there,  and  the  doctor  sent  for.  The 
guest  who  left  behind  a  suspicion  of  to 
bacco  smoke  in  the  lace  curtains  left 
also  the  suspicion  that  this  was  no  gen 
tleman —  still  more,  no  lady!  Stern 
neatness  and  tidy  utilitarianism  char- 

97 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

acterized  the  guest  chamber :  its  double 
bed  must  be  comfortable,  its  bureau 
commodious,  its  wash-stand  provided 
with  fresh  towels  and  a  new  cake  of 
pleasingly  scented  soap.  As  for  pic 
tures  and  bric-a-brac  —  it  was  a  fine 
place  to  store  a  present  without  offend 
ing  the  kind-hearted  giver. 

But  this  period  is  passing  away:  a 
new  thought  has  come  in,  that  the  guest 
should  feel  at  home,  day  or  night,  in  the 
guest  chamber,  and  human  ingenuity 
is  making  the  place  so  comfortable  that 
it  may  soon  be  difficult  to  tempt  guests 
out  of  it  except  at  meal-times.  Already, 
in  some  cases,  it  has  become  necessary 
to  serve  breakfast  in  the  guest  chamber. 
It  is  a  home  within  a  home,  an  apart 
ment  (with  breakfast)  of  one  or  more 
rooms  and  bath,  in  which  the  temporary 
tenant  pays  no  rent,  lunches  and  dines 
with  the  family,  and  is  expected  (follow- 
98 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

ing  the  apartment  hotel  custom)  to  tip 
the  house  servants.  There  is,  to  use  a 
shocking  but  expressive  figure,  one  fly 
in  his  ointment  —  the  extra  and  super 
fluous  twin  bed.  He  cannot  escape  from 
it.  In  the  daytime  it  is  a  constant  re 
minder  that  he  is,  after  all,  a  stranger 
in  a  strange  place;  nor  can  he  deceive 
himself  with  the  idea  that  he  keeps  this 
extra  cot  for  company.  He  is  the  com 
pany.  In  the  night,  if  he  happens  to 
-awake  and  turn  on  that  side,  it  sur 
prises  and  startles  him  with  its  sugges 
tion  of  a  ward  in  a  hospital. 

But  do  not  try  to  eliminate  the  extra  bed 
by  rolling  the  twins  together.  Sleeping, 
you  will  forget.  And  when,  instinctively, 
you  seek  the  middle  of  your  luxurious 
zouch,  the  twins  (ttnless  you  have  thought 
to  bind  them  leg  to  leg  with  a  couple  of 
neckties}  will  separate,  and  you  will  be 
rather  emphatically  reminded  of  what  you 

99 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

have  done,  by  falling  out  of  bed  between 
them. 

I  remember  a  guest  chamber  of  the 
earlier  regime  in  which  the  literary  inter 
ests  of  the  guest  were  catered  to  by  an 
engraving  of  the  desk  at  which  Dickens 
wrote  as  it  looked  after  Dickens  was 
dead.  Nowadays  this  is  not  sufficient. 
Books  there  must  be,  as  well  as  a  desk 
for  the  guest  to  write  at  while  he  is  still 
alive,  with  plenty  of  stamps  and  sta 
tionery,  ink,  pens,  pencils,  rubbers,  cal 
endar,  blotters,  a  bottle  of  mucilage, 
sealing-wax,  candle,  seal,  dictionary, 
Thesaurus,  and  Mr.  Bartlett's  Book  of 
Quotations.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  little 
library  in  itself;  but  the  books  unfor 
tunately  are  not  such  as  the  average 
guest  is  likely  to  pick  up,  with  an  ex 
clamation  of  delight,  and  take  to  the 
fireside.  Nor,  if  we  confess  the  truth, 
does  the  guest  often  take  much  pleasure 
100 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

in  the  classical  literature  which  his  host 
often  provides  for  him:  he  prefers  his 
own  meditations  to  those  of  Marcus  Au- 
relius.  Many  persons  can  not  read  class 
ical  literature;  and  there  is  no  little 
truth  in  the  conclusion  of  the  poet  (first 
published  in  'The  Mother's  Assistant, 
The  Young  Lady's  Friend,  and  Family 
Manual,'  Boston,  1852),— 

When  Caesar  was  a  conqueror  the  Giraffe  first 

was  tamed, 
And  for  processions  long  and  gay  this  creature 

then  was  famed; 
But  no  domestication  kind  could  make  him  fit 

for  use, 
And  Nature's  laws  for  us  to  thwart  is  manifest 

abuse. 

Sooner  or  later  some  enterprising 
publisher  will  bring  out  the  Guest- 
Chamber  Book-Shelf,  or  Twenty-five 
Best  Books  for  the  Best  Bedroom. 
Such  a  list  would,  of  course,  begin  with 
the  Bible  and  Shakespeare,  and  could 
101 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

then  conscientiously  settle  down  to  bus 
iness  with  twenty-three  places  left.  A 
book  of  home  exercises,  illustrated  with 
photographs  of  the  same  persistent 
gentleman  in  forty  or  fifty  more  or  less 
ridiculous  and  amusing  positions,  is  al 
ways  interesting.  A  book  of  nature 
essays  will  hit  some  guests,  and  miss 
others.  A  book  of  poems  to  digest  will 
sometimes  entertain  a  guest.  There 
should  be  several  books  of  short  stories 
by  authors  who  appeal  to  different  pub 
lics.  And  (I  should  say)  the  book  you 
are  now  reading.  Humor  and  novels 
might  wisely  be  omitted.  In  the  one 
case  the  guest  may  yield  to  a  natural 
temptation,  and  retell  at  dinner,  in  his 
own  words,  the  humorous  narrative  he 
has  just  been  reading;  and  in  the  other 
there  is  a  possibility  that  the  visit  will 
end  before  the  novel.  It  becomes  more 
difficult  than  ever  to  get  the  guest  out 
1 02 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

of  the  guest  chamber.  As  for  maga 
zines,  they  are  desirable  —  but  not  too 
many  of  them,  or  the  first  glimpse  of 
your  guest  chamber  may  unhappily  re 
mind  the  newcomer  of  the  waiting 
room  at  his  doctor's  or  dentist's. 

'My  chamber,'  wrote  Washington 
Irving,  describing  in  the  'Sketch  Book'  a 
contemporary  English  home,  'was  in  an 
old  part  of  the  house,  the  ponderous 
furniture  of  which  might  have  been  fab 
ricated  in  the  days  of  the  giants.  The 
room  was  panelled,  with  cornices  of 
heavily  carved  work,  in  which  flowers 
and  grotesque  faces  were  strangely  in 
termingled,  and  a  row  of  black-looking 
portraits  stared  mournfully  at  me  from 
the  walls.  The  bed  was  of  rich,  though 
faded  damask,  with  a  lofty  tester,  and 
stood  in  a  niche  opposite  the  bow-win 
dow.  .  .  .  The  moonbeams  fell 
through  the  upper  part  of  the  casement, 
103 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

partially    lighting    up    the    antiquated 
apartment.' 

It  is  an  odd  thing  about  the  guest 
chamber  of  the  past,  as  we  enter  it 
by  the  door  of  literature,  that  it  was  so 
often  gloomy:  it  is  almost  as  if  there 
has  been  a  historic  sequence  of  guest 
chambers:  (i)  those  in  which  the  guest 
was  afraid  to  sleep;  (2)  those  in  which 
he  was  willing  to  sleep;  (3)  those  in 
which  he  was  delighted  to  sleep.  If 
there  was  a  ghost  on  the  premises,  it 
was  always  likely  to  butt  in  (as  we  say 
nowadays)  in  the  guest  chamber.  If 
there  had  been  a  particularly  undesir 
able  ancestor  in  the  family,  they  always 
hung  his  portrait  (probably  to  get  rid 
of  it)  over  the  guest-chamber  fireplace, 
where  the  moon  could  light  it,  and  his 
sinister  eye,  too  natural  to  be  painted, 
could  watch  the  guest  trying  to  count 
himself  to  sleep.  The  guest-chamber 
104 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

chimney  was  peculiarly  constructed: 
always  the  wind,  carefully  imitating  its 
idea  of  a  lost  soul,  sighed  and  wailed 
and  shrieked  in  it.  The  floor  was  laid 
with  a  board  that  creaked  aloud  if  but  a 
mouse  stepped  on  it;  and  the  ivy  was 
trained  to  tap-tap-tap  like  a  finger 
on  the  window-pane.  Often  the  guest 
chamber  was  the  ghost  chamber:  and  I, 
for  one,  am  glad  that  it  is  not  so  any 
longer.  For  in  proportion  as  the  guest 
feels  at  home  in  the  guest  chamber,  the 
ghost  doesn't.  And  the  complete  at- 
homeyness  —  except  for  that  one  fly  in 
the  ointment,  the  extra  twin  bed  —  of 
our  modern  guest  chamber  makes  the 
guest  ghost-proof.  He  goes  to  bed  and 
sleeps  without  a  thought  of  ghosts,  just 
as  an  English  lady  visiting  an  American 
family  put  her  shoes  outside  the  guest- 
chamber  door,  slept,  and  took  them  in 
again,  with  never  a  thought  of  her  kind 

105 


THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

host  polishing  them  in  the  cellar.  He  is 
haunted  only  by  the  thought  that  every 
minute  brings  him  nearer  the  end  of  his 
visit. 

For  go  he  must!  The  hour  was  set, 
the  train  selected,  even  before  his  ar 
rival;  and,  to  make  assurance  doubly 
sure,  another  guest  was  probably  in 
vited.  Truly  I  spoke  without  thinking 
when  I  said  there  was  but  one  fly  in  his 
ointment:  this  Inexorable  Fact  is  an 
other  and  bigger  one.  Formerly  the 
length  of  the  visit  took  care  of  itself. 
The  guest,  always  with  the  family  ex 
cept  when  asleep  or  dressing,  reached 
the  human  limit  of  visiting  at  about  the 
same  time  that  the  family  reached  the 
human  limit  of  having  him  visit.  Now 
and  then  an  exception  caused  pain  and 
embarrassment;  but  ordinarily  they  all 
reached  their  human  limits  with  reason 
able  unanimity.  A  day  came  when  the 
1 06 


THE  GUEST  CHAMBER 

guest  said  he  '  must  go '  to-morrow :  the 
family  said  'must  he  go'  to-morrow  - 
and  to-morrow  he  went. 

It  is  not  so  nowadays.  The  guest 
being  settled  in  the  guest  chamber,— 
with  its  private  bath  and  probably, 
sooner  or  later,  its  kitchenette, —  he 
and  the  family  are  merely  pleasantly 
conscious  of  each  other:  he  might  stay 
on  and  on,  in  a  kind  of  informal  and 
happy  adoption,  until  death  or  matri 
mony  intervened  and  took  him  away. 
But  the  family,  unless  they  kept  on  add 
ing  to  the  house,  would  have  no  guest 
chamber:  and  other  things  being  equal, 
constant  building  is  an  annoyance.  And 
so,  wisely,  the  host  or  hostess  specifies 
in  advance  the  length  of  the  visit;  and 
the  extra  little  twin  bed  is  a  useful  sym 
bol  and  reminder  of  its  impermanency. 


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SEP  0  7  2001 

SRLF 
2  WEEK  LOAN 


